


Coup de main

by AirgiodSLV



Series: Last light on the horizon [2]
Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:01:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29257125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: Vanyel hasn’t forgotten what the front line is like - he doesn’t think he ever could - but he’s also certain that the Karsites are pushing harder now than they have in months.Where are they allcomingfrom?Vanyel thinks, not for the first time.And why now?
Relationships: Vanyel Ashkevron/Tylendel Frelennye
Series: Last light on the horizon [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2148432
Comments: 10
Kudos: 15





	Coup de main

**Author's Note:**

> My excuse continues to be that it's 2021. Thank you to linnyloo for always being willing to read, no matter what I come up with. Thanks also to cher, for a bit of storytelling that I only realized later I'd incorporated into my own headcanon. This follows [Last light on the horizon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28763757), although both stand alone.
> 
> Warnings: Wartime violence, discussion of depression and past trauma.

The ride back to the fort is quiet, but if Tylendel notices Vanyel's retreat beneath the cloak of Herald-Mage Vanyel Demonsbane - and he must, Vanyel could never fool an Empath who’s also his lifebonded - he doesn't comment. They've spent a day resting and planning, and when Vanyel checks his stores of magic, they're in better shape than they've been in months. The intelligence Tylendel has brought with him from farther along the border is that the Karsites are withdrawing and regrouping, which means it's only a matter of time until the next assault. 

When they ride in, the gate guards don't seem to be surprised that one Herald has multiplied into two— _although why would they?_ Vanyel thinks. Heralds pass through all the time, couriers and circuit-riders and temporary relief, and they have no way of knowing Tylendel's any different.

Vanyel doesn’t like thinking of Herald-Mages as ‘different’; it’s a sentiment he’s only just started to notice since the war and his own growing reputation, and it doesn’t help anyone. Even he has to admit, however, that this is an exception. Due to their unorthodox training with the Taleydras, they’re the only two mages on active duty in Valdemar who know how to use ley-lines and nodes, which is why they’ve been covering more of the border between them than any other Heralds.

They get their Companions settled in the unlocked box stalls that have been renovated for them, and report in to the fort’s commander, Pelvarre. Tylendel passes on dispatches from his previous post, and receives a full briefing on their present situation, which is largely unchanged from when Vanyel rode out a week ago. He and Vanyel have discussed plans and defenses already, but he’s laying the groundwork for military cooperation now as much as he’s digesting information.

The conversation moves on from supplies and personnel to their own needs, and Tylendel provides a requisition list that covers everything Vanyel would have asked for, along with a few things he hadn’t thought to request.

_:Focus crystals?:_

Tylendel slips into the link without breaking conversational stride. _:We’re surrounded by rock quarries. They’ll likely have more lying around than we’d expect, and our need is greater than any jeweler’s at the moment, wouldn’t you say?:_

A good focus _will_ make the wards around the fort easier to maintain, and with Tylendel here, they should be able to accomplish more with a workroom than Vanyel could alone.

 _:Ah, I was just getting to that,:_ Tylendel chimes in, still riding Vanyel’s thoughts. _:I don’t suppose you have a suite here?:_

Vanyel glances at him, expression laden with skepticism that’s out of context for the conversation happening out loud with the commander.

 _:Thought not. Adjoining rooms?:_ When Vanyel’s expression doesn’t change, the corner of Tylendel’s mouth twitches in a repressed smile. _:Ah, well. I assume they’re as hidebound and dogmatic here as they are farther along the border?:_

At Vanyel’s affirmation, Tylendel’s demeanor shifts slightly, becoming more grave and somber. He’s standing taller, weight balanced on planted feet, and there’s not a hint of impropriety in his voice when he tells the commander, “If there’s a room large enough for two, we can go there now. It would be best to set up the workroom before we have need of it.”

Vanyel barely avoids outright staring, and manages to fix his gaze on a tapestry across the room, schooling his features to blankness. Commander Pelvarre seems briefly taken aback. “Lord Herald, we have rooms enough…”

His tone suggests it’s a matter of pride that they aren’t billeted with the guard, but Tylendel shakes his head, somehow blending gratitude for the offer with a world-weary fatalism. “That won’t be necessary. We won’t have much time for rest, and it will be more convenient to have a mage circle prepared nearby. Much of our time there will be spent in meditation.”

It’s an appeal to the religious zeal of the south, and while Tylendel is the last person Vanyel could ever imagine as a warrior-monk, he’s acting the part well enough. The commander doesn’t seem to question his motives, promising to move them somewhere quiet and out of the way, so they won’t be disturbed. When Vanel realizes the full breadth of what Tylendel has just accomplished for them, he’s a little stunned.

 _:You’re shameless,:_ he accuses, and Tylendel glances sideways to meet his eye, a faint smile haunting his lips again.

 _:Did I lie? We’d already planned to lay trap-spells, and you and I both know how much sleep we’re likely to get.:_ His tone changes, sobering to match his expression. _:If I have to spend my days watching Karsite demons try to tear you apart, then I’m damn well going to see you safe in my bed at night.:_

 _To hells with what they think_ , is the sentiment layered over that last thought, although Vanyel knows it isn’t true, and Tylendel will be above reproach anytime they’re in public. Behind a closed door, however...Vanyel hadn’t realized what a relief it would be to have that promise of refuge until Tylendel had arranged it. He doesn’t know that he deserves it, given what they’re in the middle of, and what everyone around them is going through without that same comfort.

He also knows that if she heard that thought, Yfandes would give him a mental kick in the pants. 

They’re escorted to meet the guard captain, where they start the whole thing over again, this time more focused on troop movements and where they’re most needed. They’ve taken some losses over the past week, and while Vanyel knows there would have been more if he hadn’t gone to deal with the demons, he always wonders whether he could have made a difference.

 _:You’re doing it again,:_ Tylendel warns, calling Vanyel back to himself just as Tylendel and Captain Hale are agreeing on a time to meet again in the morning.

 _:Brooding?:_ Vanyel guesses, giving himself a mental shake.

Tylendel’s eyes cut to his briefly, just for a heartbeat. _:Letting me lead. This was your post first.:_

It’s a pattern they both fall into, either Vanyel closing off and Tylendel blossoming to fill the silence, or Tylendel embarking on an aggressive campaign of charm and goodwill that causes Vanyel to fade into the background. They’re both aware of it, but Vanyel is often relieved for Tylendel to be the center of attention—a far cry from his first days in Haven at court.

 _:You outrank me,:_ Vanyel points out with a mental shrug. _:And I wouldn’t be doing anything differently in your place.:_

This time it’s Tylendel’s turn for a disbelieving look, and his voice in Vanyel’s mind is flavored with exasperation and silent laughter. _:_ No one _outranks you, Van.:_

He’s surprised to find Yfandes expressing agreement, and he knows Tylendel isn’t lying mind-to-mind, but he also doesn’t think that can be true. He isn’t the most experienced among the Heralds, and doesn’t even sit on the Council.

 _:Not yet,:_ Yfandes agrees, thoughtful. _:If you weren’t out here, though, you might.:_

At the edge of his awareness, through both Yfandes and Tylendel, he can sense Gala weighing in, and gently but firmly pushes them all away. He might be the most powerful, but that doesn’t put him in line for the Council. Even if he were, Tylendel…

 _:Not with the black mark on my record,:_ Tylendel replies, refusing to be pushed entirely out of Vanyel’s mind. It’s a very old wound, and at this point the wry reminder is a reflex more than honest sentiment. _:Not to mention, you have twice my Gifts. I wouldn’t complain; it’s your reputation that’s going to let us pull this whole thing off.:_

Vanyel sends back a wordless query, and feels an impression of laughter in Tylendel’s reply. _:Rumor has it you’re quite the ascetic. No fine food, no indulging in spirits, no flirting with attractive young guards…:_

Vanyel gives him a look to match his dry tone. _:I wonder why.:_

 _:No idea,:_ Tylendel answers, clearly pleased and just as clearly lying when he continues, _:When you’re not around, I make eyes at everything that moves.:_

 _:Gala says he pines like a maiden in a ballad,:_ Yfandes chimes in. _:And that she’ll kick him for you if you like.:_

 _:I think I can handle him on my own, thanks,:_ Vanyel drawls, and from the corner of his eye he sees Tylendel bite his lip to hold back a betraying smile.

⛯

Vanyel hasn’t forgotten what the front line is like - he doesn’t think he ever could - but he’s also certain that the Karsites are pushing harder now than they have in months.

 _:You’re not imagining it,:_ Yfandes confirms when he asks her. _:They didn’t have you run this ragged when you were covering two other forts to the west, and that was us alone.:_

Tylendel is just as worn down as Vanyel is, and for much the same reason; there’s been a steady barrage against the fort’s defenses that hasn’t let up for days now, and when they aren’t channeling more power into the wards, they’re fighting off the constructs and creatures that seem to pop up at every inconvenient moment.

 _Where are they all_ coming _from?_ Vanyel thinks, not for the first time. _And why now?_

Tylendel is sprawled face-down on the bed when Vanyel reaches their room, a platter containing their dinner untouched on the small table. It looks just as unappetizing as Vanyel knows it will taste, but he’s been counting the meals that have gone ignored since yesterday, and this is at least the third. He also knows from the light brush of greeting against his mind that Tylendel is awake, but probably won’t be for long.

“I’ll give you a backrub if you eat something,” Vanyel offers, pausing by their travel packs to strip off his sword belt. He doesn’t need it often, but he also knows better than to ever be caught without it. He’s had to leave the fort before with no more notice than a shout from the guards and a mental call to Yfandes to meet him at the gate.

Tylendel doesn’t even twitch, and his answer is muffled by the pillow. “Bribery already? We haven’t done this in a while.”

He’s right, and it’s an old strategy, one that Vanyel had learned in the awful days before Savil took them to the Vale, when Tylendel was out of his mind with grief and courting the Shadow-Lover as much as he dared, with Gala and Vanyel the only ballasts against the terrible weight of his twin’s death.

“We haven’t needed to.” Vanyel strips off his outer layers, musty with sweat. He needs a bath, a clean uniform, and a full night’s sleep, and he isn’t going to get any of them.

Tylendel cracks one eye open, watching him, but it’s a detached interest without any weight behind it. Vanyel notices that he hasn’t made any move toward getting up, and changes tactics.

“I’m not eating until you do,” he warns, and if he times it so that his arms are over his head, pulling off his linen shirt and exposing his ribs, that doesn’t change his argument.

“That’s emotional blackmail,” Tylendel accuses, sounding slightly more aware now, and focused on Vanyel.

“Yes,” Vanyel agrees, because he isn’t apologizing for it. He wouldn’t cross this line unless he felt it was necessary, and Tylendel knows it. It’s why he knows that Tylendel will yield now, rather than put up a fight.

Tylendel heaves a sigh, then rolls onto his back with visible effort. “It must be bad, if you’re digging your heels in. Will you bring the tray over?”

Vanyel raises an eyebrow, but he also picks up the platter. “Lazy.”

Tylendel grins at him. “Always. But I was thinking that if you came over here, I’d get you _and_ dinner.”

Vanyel sinks down onto the narrow bed beside him, and Tylendel pushes himself upright, combing his fingers through the tangled snarl of his hair and wrinkling his nose at the pot of congealing porridge. “Gods. I didn’t think it was possible to make food this bad.”

“Mortification of the flesh and the spirit,” Vanyel reminds him, although he privately agrees. “We might have some dried fruit left in the packs.”

“Leave it. We’ll need it soon enough.” Tylendel picks up a spoon and pokes at the porridge, sets it down, and then picks it up again. “I wish I knew what they were doing.”

Vanyel has been wondering the same thing, and he doesn’t like any of the answers he’s come up with so far. “They’re testing us.”

“Right. They know we’re here.” When Vanyel makes a face, Tylendel shakes his head. “No, listen. We both know those demons were a trap. They probably meant to kill you, but even if that failed, they got you out of the fort for days. Why wait until you’re back here to start this assault? Why not try for the fort while they’d got you out of the way?”

“Maybe they got the timing wrong,” Vanyel hazards, without much confidence. “They wanted to be sure I was really gone, and they left it too long.”

“No,” Tylendel muses. The spoon hasn’t made it to his mouth once. Vanyel picks up his own spoon and waits, pointedly. Tylendel makes another face at him, but digs into the porridge with a grimace. “The mage would’ve known when you finished off the demons, wouldn’t he? And then you waited for me. You could have been back days sooner if you hadn’t known I was on the way.”

“You think they’re keeping us pinned down?” It’s an uncomfortable thought, but not one they can afford to ignore. It also doesn’t ring quite true. “We’re still getting dispatches, and the road is passable. We’re not cut off.”

“And if they’re testing our defenses, they’re not doing a good job of it. We might be tired, but we’re a long way from any real danger. We’re still catching sleep, and there’s plenty of magic to tap into—this bombardment they’ve kept up is frustrating and exhausting, but not a real threat.” Tylendel taps his spoon against his teeth. “There must be a reason for it. Something we’re missing. If this was all they had to throw at us, you would have cleaned this up a season ago.”

Tylendel’s faith in him is biased, but it still warms Vanyel—especially when it’s given out like this, casual and distracted, rather than as a sincere compliment. “Something else along the border? This could just be a distraction.”

Tylendel grimaces. “And they’re keeping us busy without wasting too many resources? It’s all too likely. In which case,” he sighs, “one of us ought to ride out tomorrow to see what we find. A day’s ride in each direction, and circle around north?”

That will make it four days for a full trip, roughly, if Vanyel remembers the maps correctly. “We can sort it tomorrow. After you get some sleep.”

Tylendel looks up from the porridge he’s dutifully finishing off, scraping up the last of it from the sides of the bowl without enthusiasm. “It’s your turn. I’ll stand watch.”

One of them has been awake to maintain the magical defenses since the current attack began, taking sleep in shifts a few hours apart. Vanyel wonders if there’s something there—if the Karsites are waiting for a single mage to gradually wear down and collapse from exhaustion, not realizing there are two of them. He’s too tired to follow that thought now, but he flags it to discuss with Tylendel and Yfandes in the morning.

“Last night you were barely out before they brought in the firedrake and we were called up to the walls, and I know you haven’t slept since. Go on, you’re exhausted,” Vanyel urges, nudging Tylendel with his elbow and picking up the platter to return it to the table. Between the two of them, they’ve cleared it, and while the porridge sits like a cold lump in his stomach, it will keep them going for a while longer.

“Stay?” Tylendel asks, and when Vanyel looks back at him, he’s thrown one arm out in invitation across the bed.

Vanyel is tempted, badly, but there’s always a risk of discovery, and he doesn’t want to court that sort of disaster. He could shield the door, set wards...but that’s more energy than he’s willing to expend just for a moment of privacy. They don’t know when they’ll next need every scrap of magic they have between them.

“You’re thinking too much.” Tylendel chuckles. Either Vanyel’s wistful expression has given him away, or Tylendel has caught the shape of his hesitation. They’re tired enough to be leaking somewhat with each other, emotions and surface thoughts spilling over.

“Something Tantras told me when I saw him. Mages get so used to doing things with spells, we overlook the obvious.” When Vanyel looks blankly at him, Tylendel gives him a weary grin and rolls over again, though his arm is still outstretched, waiting for Vanyel to slip under it and curl in against him.

“Van,” Tylendel says, muffled into the pillow, “just wedge the table under the damned door latch.”

It can’t be that simple, Vanyel thinks, but he drags the table across the narrow room anyway, and then he stares at it, marveling at how he’d missed something so obvious.

 _:You’re not thinking clearly,:_ Yfandes reminds him. _Neither of you are. Sleep now. Gala and I can keep watch.:_

He hesitates, but he already knows that she could counter any argument he musters, and the bed _is_ tempting, not only because it has Tylendel in it. Although, he admits to himself, that’s certainly part of the appeal.

Tylendel is more than half-asleep already when Vanyel sinks down beside him, but he reflexively pulls Vanyel in against him, and Vanyel can feel the soft, slow rhythm of his breath against Vanyel’s face, in and out.

He feels Yfandes’ awareness shift, her link to him making it easy for her to monitor his magic, watching for weaknesses or the pressure of an outside assault. He’s asleep before his next heartbeat.

⛯

It feels like only a moment before the light touch of Yfandes' mind against his wakes him, although his sour breath and gritty eyes tell him it's been at least a few candlemarks. Beside him, Tylendel groans quietly and stirs, his face pressed against Vanyel's neck, breath warm and stubble rough against Vanyel’s skin.

 _:'Fandes?:_ Vanyel's thoughts are sleep-thick and stupid, but that's oddly reassuring—if there had been an emergency, he knows from experience he'd have been up and halfway across the room before the fog had cleared from his mind. _:What is it?:_

 _:I'm not sure,:_ she answers, sounding tense. _:There are riders at the gate with news, and there's movement across the border. Something's happening.:_

Tylendel shifts again, which means that Gala must have woken him with the same news, and if there really is activity in the Karsite camp, someone is likely already on the way to find them. They have a few minutes before it becomes urgent, so Vanyel takes a moment to look down at Tylendel’s face, still relaxed from sleep, mouth soft and eyelashes fanned dark gold against his cheeks. He sends a wordless pulse of love along their bond, and feels the echo of it returned.

“Get that look off your face,” Tylendel warns without opening his eyes, “or there’s a chance we won’t make it out of this bed.”

It’s an empty threat, Vanyel knows, but that isn’t why Tylendel’s said it—it’s to make warmth bloom in Vanyel’s chest, that feeling of adoration and want that still surprises him, even after all this time.

He rolls off the bed and runs his hands through his hair, dipping a cloth in cold water from the basin to scrub away stale sweat. He winces at the state of the linen shirt he’d stripped off before falling asleep. It’s the cleanest he’s got, but the idea of pulling it over his head makes his skin crawl.

“Take one of mine.” Tylendel kisses his shoulder in passing, straightening the tunic he hadn’t bothered to remove. “We’ll sort it out later.”

They’re more-or-less presentable by the time they step into the hallway, just in time to meet a page hurrying to fetch them. “Soldiers in the courtyard, lords. Captain sent me to bring you back.”

There’s a full Guard company in the courtyard when they arrive. _No_ , Vanyel thinks— _there aren’t nearly enough for a full company_. What remains of one, then, all bearing the same sigil. Bloodstained and bedraggled, but still disciplined. Captain Hale stands with a tall, angular woman who must be the leader of the new arrivals.

“Sergeant Jessa Corey, just came up through the disputed lands,” Captain Hale reports, making introductions. “Herald-Mages Ashkevron and Frelennye.”

The woman’s eyes widen on Vanyel, and she blinks, a surprised smile flashing over her thin face. “Ashkevron...not one of Lissa’s kin, from Forst Reach? She fostered with us.”

 _One of the seven Corey swordsmaids_ , Vanyel thinks, and feels a jarring moment of disorientation. He sees Jessa Corey’s expression change, putting together _Lissa’s kin_ and _Herald-Mage_ , and then her gaze tears away from him to Tylendel, and he sees the coin drop as she puts it all together.

 _Hells_.

“Brother,” he says as lightly as possible, pulling her attention back to him. “How is Liss?”

“Doing us proud,” Jessa answers, and then she seems to come to a decision, clearing the startled understanding from her face. “She talks a lot about you. Her honorable brother, the self-sacrificing Herald, pious and chaste as a priest. She always says it’s a good thing you never went for the Guard; we’d be too much trouble for you.”

He nearly chokes. He hears the stifled squawk of laughter that Tylendel turns into a cough, and then the moment passes, and he’s rarely been more grateful for a wartime emergency that’s brought a troop of guards pelting through enemy territory to bring more ill news to their door.

As if in response to his thoughts, there’s a shout from the wall, and the barrage of crossbow bolts that’s been raining down on the fort redoubles. Vanyel draws in a sharp breath. Jessa looks up as though she’s expecting to see the sky falling in on them, but the bolts only flash as they’re deflected by his shielding.

“We’re safe in here.” Tylendel, smooth and charming as always, takes the lead to cover Vanyel’s distraction while he grounds and strengthens the wards. “You look as though you have a story for us.”

Jessa’s face tightens again, and she nods once, brisk and grave. A soldier, reporting in. “I do. We’ve been farther south than we meant, caught on the wrong side during a retreat. We’ve been staying out of sight and working our way back to Valdemar, but yesterday we caught sight of the Karsites moving some damn big machines this way. Siege engines and catapults, and something like a battering ram. We broke cover and made a dash for it to get you news, but they’ll know the secret’s out.”

“And likely move fast, so we don’t have time to prepare.” Captain Hale turns to the closest of her guards. “Warn the lookouts, and fortify against a siege. Get everyone inside the walls, call back the scouts.” She nods at Jessa. “You might have bought us some time. They could still put on speed to reach us, but they’ll be wary if they know we’ve been warned.”

Vanyel finds himself reaching for Tylendel even before he’s fully formed the thought he wants to share. He feels Yfandes there as well, listening in. _:I don’t know what good we’ll be against siege engines, but I also don’t know how they think they’ll get through the mage-barrier. What are they planning?:_

 _:Your guess is as good as mine.:_ When Vanyel glances at him, Tylendel is looking up toward the walls, thoughtful. _:I’d like a look at this battering ram.:_

Vanyel has a feeling they’re going to get a closer look than they’d like, and he can feel Yfandes in grim agreement.

“Get everyone in,” Captain Hale orders. “We’ll meet in the keep. I’ll inform the commander. Are the Karsites…?”

There’s another shout from one of the sentries on the walls above, relayed in rapid succession down the line. Captain Hale curses. They haven’t bought any time after all—the Karsites are already on the march.

“Sound the alarm,” Captain Hale orders, and the guards scramble to their stations, the courtyard transforming into a hectic rush of troops and horses. “Fall in line, we’ll find work for you,” she tells Jessa, who nods and starts giving orders of her own.

Vanyel is accustomed to staying near the fort commander and waiting to be useful, but Tylendel plucks his sleeve to get his attention, head tilted toward the wall. “I’m going up for a bit, to see if I can help.”

Vanyel is briefly lost for words, an unexpected jab of fear turning him cold at the idea of Tylendel in danger—and _here_ , which is somehow far worse than Tylendel being in constant, abstract danger, somewhere far away. He spins a memory of a recent conversation and sends it between their minds - _recklessly suicidal_ \- and hears Tylendel chuckle.

“Not while I have you, _ashke_ ,” he promises, winking before he turns to follow the stream of guards.

A brief look around shows there’s no one near enough to hear them, or paying any attention besides. Vanyel still flings a thought after him. _Are we telling Jessa Corey that means ‘comrade-in-arms’ in Tayledras?:_

Tylendel’s amused reply echoes back to him at once. _:I think your sister’s told Jessa Corey all she needs to know about us. Get to the commander, love. I’ll be there soon.:_

⛯

There are maps spread across the table in the keep, with counting-tokens to represent guards and arms piled on them in stacks that are far shorter than those standing for the Karsites. Commander Pelvarre, Captain Hale, and Sergeant Corey are deep in a discussion of how long their supplies will hold out, which they break off at Vanyel’s entrance.

“The other mage?” Commander Pelvarre asks, raising one impressive eyebrow.

Vanyel shakes his head. “On the wall with the guards. He’ll send me any news.”

“And faster than pages, I’ll warrant. Damn convenient, having a pair of you.”

If it’s a rebuke, Vanyel doesn’t rise to it; Pelvarre should know they don’t have enough Herald-Mages to spare two in one place like this often. “Are we equipped for a siege?”

“Have been since harvest,” Pelvarre answers. “Although how long we hold out will depend on how long you can keep that shield up around us.”

It’s a question, and one Vanyel has to weigh before answering. “If nothing changes, then quite a while.” _But they have to know that. They’re up to something_.

 _:They’re in range of the archers.:_ Tylendel slips into Vanyel’s mind with the ease of long practice. It feels like a hand reaching out of the darkness, one Vanyel clasps easily to pull Tylendel into their conference. _:They’ve stopped just short of the shield and look as though they’re planning to stay a while. Two siege engines, three catapults, and that battering ram. Jessa was right, there’s something odd about it.:_

Vanyel relays the information, and Jessa frowns. “The archers can’t fire through the shields, though, isn’t that right? So they might be in range, but our hands are tied as much as theirs are unless you lower the barrier.”

“Which might well be what they’re waiting for.” Vanyel can feel Yfandes listening in, too, and her agreement.

 _:I haven’t sensed that mage we’ve been chasing, though,:_ she adds, which reminds Vanyel of the strangeness he hadn’t been able to pin down last night. Why trap them here without a force capable of taking them on?

“We’ve been wondering if this isn’t a distraction,” Vanyel admits. “If they’re keeping us busy while they march farther along the border…”

“We can’t leave the fort undefended,” Pelvarre interjects immediately. “There’s been no report of another attack.”

“No, but we might split our forces,” Vanyel returns. Although leaving the fort now, with the Karsites camped on the doorstep...it’s likely they wouldn’t make it very far.

 _:I think we were right about them holding us here,:_ Vanyel sends, and feels the hum of two distinct acknowledgements.

“How difficult is it to raise and lower the shield?” Captain Hale asks. “If we time our volleys, we might be able to pick them off, one line at a time.”

Vanyel opens his mouth to reply, but then there’s a sharp warning from Tylendel - _:Ram!:_ \- and an impact that jars Vanyel from his toes to his teeth, sending him staggering.

It’s not a physical assault. He realizes it in a heartbeat, that the blow he’d felt wasn’t the fort shuddering, but a strike against his shield, a hundred times more forceful than the earlier bombardment.

 _:Are you all right?:_ Yfandes is there with him, offering her strength to bolster his magic. Jessa has realized that something is wrong as well, and steps close with her hand out, hovering near his arm in case he needs the support.

From Tylendel there’s a current of concern buried so deeply he must be feeling it through their lifebond, but on the surface, Tylendel has broken off contact. Vanyel understands why when he goes to feed more energy into his shield and finds that Tylendel is raising a second one, sliding in just beneath his as a reinforcement if it gives way.

 _When_ it gives way, Vanyel realizes, as another tremendous impact crashes against his magic, and even with Yfandes bracing him he can just barely hold it.

“Shield is...coming down…” he grits out, all but a bare fraction of his concentration on centering and grounding, to hold out as long as he can manage.

 _:Drop it, Van, I’ve got it,:_ Tylendel calls, tension in his tone but no hesitation. _Build again under mine if you can. That should buy us some time.:_

He does, but it’s too slow, releasing the magic properly and starting over again, finding the smooth surface of Tylendel’s defenses and fitting a new barrier against it. He can’t feel the next impact, but Tylendel vanishes again, blinking out of contact like a snuffed candle, and Vanyel knows it’s taking all his concentration to hold the shield. _We can’t keep this up for long_.

Commander Pelvarre and Captain Hale are asking questions, and he needs to answer and warn them, but he can’t split his focus. If Tylendel can hold against two blows...three? ...he’ll need to drop his shield soon and fall back behind Vanyel’s.

“We need to ready the archers,” he hears Jessa saying, and then he feels Tylendel’s shield start to buckle, the magic beginning to destabilize and falter.

 _It’s a set-spell,_ he thinks, clearly enough for Yfandes, at least, to hear him. _Which means…_

The mage isn’t here. Either they’re right and he’s headed with another force to another point along the border, or…

Yfandes finishes the thought with him. _:Or they’re planning to wear us down and bring him in when we don’t have any reserves left.:_

Their only advantage might be the Karsites not knowing there are two Herald-Mages here, and not just one; but even as Vanyel thinks that, he wonders if it’s too late. If they didn’t know before, the way Tylendel and Vanyel are trading off defenses might be giving it away.

On the heels of that thought, Vanyel feels Tylendel’s shield give way, and a sharp, wordless cry of warning just before the head-splitting impact of the battering ram nearly bowls him over.

“Can’t...much longer,” he tries to warn the others. Tylendel is already spinning another shield, but the faster he works to raise it, the sloppier and less efficient it will be, and the sooner it will fail. There’s an echo of that thought in his mind, agreement and a frantic search for alternatives, and then Tylendel tumbles back into his mind, sharp and urgent.

_:Van! I need you!:_

He reaches out to grab whatever’s closest, which turns out to be Jessa. “I need to get to the wall,” he gets out, and then the battering ram strikes again and he nearly goes to his knees.

They make it to the stairs - too slowly, Vanyel’s shield shatters halfway up and Tylendel’s starts to crack after one blow - and across the wall, facing out across a field of Karsites waiting for the mage-barrier to fall.

Tylendel’s jaw is set, and his knuckles are white where he grips the rampart. _:I can’t take it out with magic, everything I try just slips off it. We’re doing this another way. If I Fetch it forward, can you get it through the barrier?:_

Vanyel tries to wrap his head around that. The ram swings ponderously forward, colliding with the crackling energy of Tylendel’s shield, and Vanyel can feel it bow dangerously. The next strike will cave it in, and Vanyel doesn’t yet have one in place behind it.

 _:You can’t Fetch something that big on your own,:_ he sends, and sees mulish determination in Tylendel’s expression by way of response.

_:I can damn well try. Fetching and Mage-Gift together might do it.:_

_:Not on your own,:_ Vanyel repeats, and summons all the energy he has at hand, readying it for Tylendel to siphon away. “Archers,” he says aloud to Jessa, who’s still wide-eyed but alert at his side. “Shield’s about to…”

He feels when it gives way beneath the next heavy crack of the battering ram, and then he grabs Tylendel’s arm and _pushes_ , opening himself up and letting the magic flood out of him like a dam breaking, feeding Tylendel’s Gifts.

Savil hadn’t tried to teach them concert work, judging them too damaged and raw to trust it as trainees, and she’d been right. They’ve found since then, however, that the bond they’d forged that first time, the one that had ripped Vanyel’s mind open when Tylendel was past sanity, has always been there when they reach for it. They haven’t needed to learn concert work, because it isn’t like working with another mage at all—it’s more like allowing the only barrier between them to fall, and raw, unchanneled magic to rush through it.

The air around them crackles, suddenly dry and thick, the taste of lightning in the air when Vanyel draws in a breath...and then there’s a _pull_ , one enormous heave forward, and the archers on the wall loose a volley of arrows onto the Karsites below, and another, and the ram leaps forward in a blink and crashes into the moat outside the gates.

There’s a moment when the magic pouring out of him slows, crashing like a wave onto a shore, and then it rushes back into him, Tylendel’s coming along with it, and Vanyel centers, grounds, and pulls a barrier from the earth around them just as the Karsites recover from their surprise and start to charge.

He hadn’t been expecting it, but he knows why Tylendel is having him raise the shield; he’s better with focused defensive magics, just as Tylendel has much stronger Fetching. Vanyel gasps as the shield snaps into place, and Jessa curses as his knees buckle and Tylendel sways, both of them nearly toppling over.

The arrows currently in flight smack into the resurrected barrier and fall harmlessly to the ground, and a chorus of shouts holds the next volley from being fired. Some of the Karsite troops have made it to the other side while the shield was down, but they’re cut off from their main force now, and the Valdemaran archers are quick to change targets.

“Will it hold?” Jessa grips his arm, holding him upright and searching his face. “Will the shield hold?”

“It’ll hold,” he croaks, and he sees her face relax just before she spins away to start shouting orders.

_:’Lendel?:_

_:Fine,:_ Tylendel answers immediately, blinking the dazed fog from his eyes. _:You might have been right about trying to move something that heavy.:_

Vanyel snorts a surprised bark of laughter, and Tylendel smiles tiredly back at him.

 _:They’re not retreating,:_ Yfandes points out, and Vanyel turns back toward the field so that she can see through his eyes. _I doubt this is the only trick they have up their sleeve.:_

Vanyel groans inwardly and hauls himself upright. _Let’s hope it is for now, and that we’ll have a chance to regroup. Preferably,:_ he adds, with an optimistic yearning to fall flat on his face, _:after another few hours of sleep.:_

⛯

Their good fortune holds, and the Karsites pull back out of the archers’ range, taking the siege engines and catapults with them. They’re not bombarding the shield anymore either, which is a relief Vanyel suspects will be short-lived. Their first plan may have failed, but Yfandes is right to expect that they’ll have another.

The rest of the day is spent strategizing and organizing dispatches, pooling their intelligence to guess where else along the border the Karsites might be massing for a strike. The planning session stretches late into the night, until the candles have burnt down to stubs and Vanyel finds he’s nodding off to sleep in the middle of a conversation. He can’t even remember what they’re talking about anymore.

Thankfully, everyone else notices his fading attention around the same time he does, and as Tylendel isn’t in any better shape, they adjourn for the rest of the night. The camp across the border is dark, and without the constant barrage against his shield, Vanyel can hold it with minimal effort. He’s deeply asleep within minutes of returning to their room, Gala promising through Yfandes to stand watch over their defenses.

He wakes slowly, with Tylendel’s arm around his waist and a sense that they’ve slept late into the morning. Yfandes confirms it when he reaches for her, but assures him that no one’s come looking for them before now. They’re back to a standoff, it seems, which doesn’t set his mind at ease.

Vanyel tries opening his eyes, experimentally, and the stabbing headache that greets him almost makes him wish he hadn’t. It’s backlash, although he hasn’t overextended so far that willow bark tea and something to eat won’t take care of it.

 _:I wish you wouldn’t merge like that,:_ Yfandes tells him, with the tart note in her voice that means she’s worried for him. _:I don’t know that it’s good for either of you.:_

Vanyel doesn’t know, either. He knows why Yfandes worries—Tylendel was careless with him once, a very long time ago, and Vanyel still has a tendency to lay everything he has and is at Tylendel’s feet. It would be easy for one of them to take too much without realizing; more than the other has to spare.

 _:Neither of us could have done that alone,:_ he points out, remembering the weight of the battering ram and their fractured shields.

 _:No,:_ she agrees reluctantly. _:But you’re both too quick to look for it as a solution, when there might be another way.:_

He wonders if Tylendel gets this lecture from Gala as well. Gala doesn’t seem to lecture as much as Yfandes does, but she’s also not shy when it comes to letting Tylendel know her opinions, and she’s fiercely protective of him. She’d nearly lost him once before; Vanyel knows she’ll never let him slip that far from her again.

The same is true for Yfandes, which is why Vanyel’s apology is an honest one. _:We’ll try to be more careful. I know I can be impulsive when it seems like he needs me.:_

She softens enough that he knows he’s been forgiven. _:I knew you were a lovesick fool when I Chose you. I just wish you’d look out for yourself more often. Valdemar can’t afford to lose you, and neither can I.:_

There’s a lot wrapped up in that sentiment that he isn’t ready to face before breakfast, not least the reminder that she considers him highest-ranking among the Heralds. He wants some time to think it over on his own, and then he wants to talk with Tylendel.

Tylendel hasn’t stirred during their conversation, and doesn’t wake when Vanyel slides out of bed. The servants haven’t been in, respecting either their privacy or the barricade Vanyel has formed in front of the door, so after he washes with cold water from the basin, he clears the way and steps into the hallway to ask a page for food and tea.

Tylendel’s eyes are heavy-lidded but open when Vanyel returns to the room. Vanyel sits on the edge of the bed and threads their fingers loosely together, and Tylendel squeezes his hand and yawns. “Headache?”

Vanyel shrugs. “Not nearly as bad as I’d expected. I called for some tea.”

“I heard. I suppose I should drag myself out of bed.” Tylendel rolls as if to sit up, then flops onto his back and closes his eyes again. “I wish I had the energy for flirtation. I can’t remember ever feeling less amorous.”

“No?” Vanyel stifles a smile. “What about that time you had spoiled meat at the summer festival and spent the whole night being ill into the chamber pot?”

Tylendel groans and drags himself upright, leaning back against the wall. “I’d rather not remember it. I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a hot bath?”

“This close to Karse?” Vanyel returns, and chuckles at the face Tylendel pulls. “There’s water in the basin.”

A light knock on the door makes both of them freeze, though it’s the hair-trigger alertness of being in a combat zone, Vanyel thinks, rather than fear of being caught. Their hands slip free anyway, and Vanyel goes to answer the door, expecting the page with a tray.

He’s right about the tray, but Jessa Corey is the one holding it. “I saw you’d ordered breakfast,” she explains. “I thought I’d say hello.”

He glances over his shoulder, which might be damning in itself, but Tylendel just shrugs. _:She already knows,:_ he points out. _:Might as well let her in.:_

The look Jessa gives Tylendel - bare to the waist and washing himself at the basin, tan skin gleaming and water dripping from his hair onto well-formed shoulders - is appreciative enough that Vanyel feels an entirely undeserved prick of smug pride. Tylendel picks up enough of it to throw him a wry look, but he also flexes the muscles in his back when he turns to retrieve a shirt, which Vanyel is sure isn’t accidental.

 _:I thought you weren’t feeling amorous,:_ he teases, amused.

 _:That’s really the best I can do, so don’t get your hopes up,:_ Tylendel replies, and they grin at each other, stealing a sidelong glance before Tylendel’s head disappears into his shirt.

Jessa seems to have missed their byplay, busy with the breakfast tray, for which Vanyel is grateful. “How are you feeling?” she asks, turning back to him and searching his face. “You looked terrible last night.”

“We’ve had worse,” Vanyel assures her, mentally adding, _much worse_. “It’s nothing tea and a good meal won’t cure.”

“I don’t know about a _good_ meal. I’m tempted to fall back on field rations.” Jessa cocks her head at him, half-smiling. “And I can imagine you have. Had worse, I mean. Lissa’s told me a lot of stories about you. It’s Vanyel, isn’t it?”

“Please,” Tylendel puts in, “tell me these stories, I want to hear them all.”

Jessa laughs. “I’ll bet you have plenty of your own.”

Vanyel glances at Tylendel, then back to Jessa. “We’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention…”

Jessa shakes her head and cuts him off. “It’s not my first tour on the Karse border. I wouldn’t go telling tales even if it was. Your secret’s safe with me. Although I will have to let Lissa know I’ve seen you, the next time I can get a letter off.”

“I owe her one as well. More than one. She’s well?”

“Stationed up north last I heard, and itching for a fight, but there were reports of raiders from the mountains and they needed cool heads to deal with the trouble. Not like we need any more of that, the way things are down here.”

She looks between the two of them, and Vanyel thinks she might be working up the nerve to ask something about their relationship, but he’s wrong. “I wanted you to know…I’ve heard the stories. Not just from Lissa, but about the Heralds. About your Companions. Heralds can’t be corrupted, that’s what everyone says. And that’s something I worry about down here. Corruption.”

She squares her shoulders. “There’s something going on here, I think that’s clear. If you need me or mine...we know where we fall, in the chain of command. But if it comes down to it, and there’s a choice that has to be made...we also respect the Heralds. That’s all I wanted to say.”

Vanyel is too off-guard to make a reply; it’s Tylendel who answers, his voice grave. “Thank you, Sergeant Corey. We’ll do our best.”

Jessa nods and makes a quick exit, leaving the two of them in silence. Then Tylendel exhales explosively and falls to his back on the foot of the bed, a hand flung over his eyes.

 _:Demons,:_ Vanyel sends, suddenly wary of ears at the door. _:She means possession.:_

“That’s all we need,” Tylendel answers. His voice is oddly strained. Vanyel wonders if he’s had to deal with a possession, and how recently, and how badly it went.

 _:They shouldn’t be able to slip through the shield,:_ Vanyel points out. Tylendel doesn’t answer, and Vanyel belatedly notices that his personal shielding is all up and drawn in tight around him, and that Tylendel isn’t Mindspeaking. He’s not letting Vanyel in at all, in fact. Vanyel sends another tendril of thought toward him, tentative. _:_ Ashke _?:_

There’s a long moment before Tylendel answers. “I’m the _last_ person anyone should be claiming as an incorruptible moral bastion.”

 _Oh_. Vanyel should have seen that coming, probably, but it’s been a while since he’s hit this particular hurdle, and he hadn’t been prepared for the jump. He wavers between Mindspeech and talking aloud, and chooses to reach out mind-to-mind again, hoping both that he can coax Tylendel out from behind his defenses and that Tylendel will be more likely to believe him, knowing he can’t lie mind-to-mind.

_:It’s not the same. You were lost and grieving.:_

“I was a Herald,” Tylendel returns, and now Vanyel can hear the ragged edges, even if Tylendel is locked down too tightly for him to feel it.

 _:You were a trainee.:_ It isn’t the right thing to say, but Vanyel doesn’t know what is. Yfandes is conspicuously silent—they’ve learned over the years that he and Tylendel need to work through their relationship on their own, without interference from well-meaning Companions who don’t fully understand being human.

There’s a crack in Tylendel’s shields, just enough for Vanyel to catch a glimpse of the bleak, self-loathing depression that Tylendel is sinking in like quicksand. Then it’s gone, and Tylendel is sitting up, face blank.

“We don’t have time for this now. Let’s eat, and then we can see if there’s any news from the nearest forts.”

Before he realizes what he’s doing, Vanyel has physically moved to block the door, everything in him rebelling at the idea of letting Tylendel go. He has to take a moment to process that, to trace the immediate, visceral objection to its source.

“We make time,” he says firmly. “We can’t work magic together like this.”

This is what Yfandes is afraid of, he realizes; that one of them will lose their center, or stop trusting themselves, and drag the other down along with them. Mage-work is difficult and can become all-consuming, and they can’t afford to lose faith in themselves.

It isn’t a great time; they’re both under pressure, with backlash headaches and others waiting for them to come up with plans, but they’ll just have to make do. He pours two cups of tea, grabs the tray of unappetizing fish and hard, flat bread, and walks over to the bed.

“Move over,” he says lightly, nudging Tylendel to make room. “Let’s talk.”

⛯

“East,” Tylendel says, at the same time Vanyel says, “West.”

They glance up at each other over the map, and then Tylendel says with a rueful smile, “Believe it or not, we aren’t always in such perfect agreement.”

Jessa seems to be smothering a grin; Captain Hale just looks uncertain. “You think there’s trouble elsewhere along the border and we’re not hearing about it?”

Tylendel scrubs a hand over his face. “We think they’re trying to keep us busy here, likely to distract us from looking elsewhere, yes. The question is, why?”

“The last diversion near the fort was to the east,” Vanyel points out, tracing the border road. “They wouldn’t have drawn me out _toward_ trouble if there’s something going on they don’t want us to know about.”

“That’s the only real evidence we’ve seen of mage work,” Tylendel counters. “Everything here is set-spells and constructs, or sent in from elsewhere like the firedrake. Those demons you took out had to be conjured by someone, and not from a far distance.”

“They could have been dormant,” Vanyel suggests. “The report was about a construct, not demon attacks.”

“And those would have gotten attention,” Tylendel agrees. “You think it was a trap laid in advance, outside of your usual circuit?”

“You said the Karsites might be trying to keep you in the fort,” Captain Hale breaks in. “Does that mean they know you’re here?”

Tylendel hums thoughtfully. “They know Vanyel is here,” he allows. “It’s even odds whether they’ve guessed about me. If there’s an actual mage nearby, I’d say, yes, but…”

He trails off when Captain Hale shakes her head, lips pressed together. “Does that mean they _knew_ a Herald-Mage was here when they started this attack?”

Tylendel blinks. Vanyel feels just as thrown. _:We did wonder about the timing.:_

 _:We thought they’d gotten it wrong, not that they’d intentionally waited for us,:_ Tylendel points out. It’s a chilling thought, as is Captain Hale’s question about whether the Karsites know there are two of them trapped here. Tylendel seems to be following the same line of thinking. _:For both of us?:_

If they’ve used Vanyel as bait to draw in Tylendel...he’s so chilled and angry suddenly that he misses whatever Tylendel says next, only catching Captain Hale’s response.

“But you think there’s still more of a threat elsewhere, not that there’s a bigger one coming here and hoping to find you waiting?”

Either way, it’s a good argument for moving on, or splitting up to investigate. Which still leaves them the question of where to go from here.

 _:Why east?:_ Vanyel asks, sending out a new tendril of thought toward Tylendel.

 _:You’ve had this and two other forts to the west covered,:_ Tylendel answers. _:I was stationed a week’s ride to the east, well out of the way if you’d called for help.:_

“It’s a guess,” Tylendel says aloud, answering Captain Hale. “But there’s not really anything keeping us here. The fort would be fine if we dropped the shield and you sent out troops to drive the Karsites off, and we can leave anytime. They haven’t tried to block the gates or the road.”

Vanyel gazes down at the map, thinking about the forces positioned along the border. Tylendel had been well out of range, true, but there are other Heralds - and Herald-Mages - on circuit to the east. He and Tylendel had chosen where to stand their ground based on the movements of the Karsite mages. That, and…

 _:Nodes,:_ Vanyel sends suddenly, light dawning. _:’Lendel, you and I were so far apart because we were working with nodes and ley-lines.:_

Tylendel’s attention refocuses on the map. “Where’s the worst place for them to pick a fight with us?” he asks, directing it to the group as a whole. As Captain Hale begins to point out the weaker points of their defense, Vanyel tries to form a picture of the magical lines criss-crossing the area, and the focal points where he and Tylendel can draw the most power.

Tylendel had been right; to the east, there’s not much that he can remember, and even with Tylendel filling in the gaps in his knowledge, there’s a lot of ground to cover.

There’s more, Vanyel realizes, and he’s reaching out to Tylendel before the thought is even fully formed. _:We’re not thinking about this in both directions. If this really is a strike, it’s not just where we can do_ our _magic…:_

 _:Blood mages,:_ Tylendel finishes his thought, and reaches out to sweep a handful of counters from the map. He does so with Fetching to avoid upsetting any of the other markers, and both Captain Hale and Jessa jump when a handful of metal tokens leap up and clatter to the side of the table.

It’s the forts he’s removed; the well-defended and heavily-armed garrisons, where the Karsites could lay siege and might eventually wear down the troops, but slowly, over time. A blood mage needs death, sacrifice; energy to feed on and shape.

“Here, and here,” Vanyel says urgently, pointing out villages within the territory he and Tylendel considered the most difficult to defend.

“If they came up from the south, along this route…” Tylendel traces the curving line of population centers along an old trade road.

“Those are hardly strategic targets,” Captain Hale interrupts, frowning, but Vanyel can see exactly what Tylendel means, the path like an arrow pointed toward a target.

“They have to know we’d go…” he begins, but Tylendel is sharing his thoughts, and they’re completing each other’s rejoinders.

“By the time reports came in, if they were fast enough…”

“Gods, three...four? That much power stored up for a strike…”

“And if we did go to meet them…”

“We’d be out of reach where, here?”

“The waystation where I met you…”

“ _Barely_ in my range, and that’s only a day’s ride…”

Captain Hale clears her throat. Jessa is looking back and forth between them like she’s watching a pair of jugglers passing lit torches.

“I have the feeling,” says Captain Hale, “that I’m missing half this conversation.”

Tylendel rubs his face again, and when he emerges from behind his hand, his expression has reverted to roguish and disarming. He’s still worried and tense, Vanyel can feel it, but he’s hiding it behind a mask now, playing to his audience.

“Sorry,” Tylendel says sincerely. “Bad habit. Van and I have a theory about where the Karsites might be picking their next battleground.”

 _:You’re unnervingly good at that,:_ Vanyel sends, as the two women visibly relax slightly under the onslaught of Tylendel’s self-deprecating charm.

_:Politics, love. Would you believe they wanted me for an envoy?:_

They both know that the real reason Tylendel had been groomed for diplomacy, once upon a time, has less to do with temperament and everything to do with what happened after Staven was assassinated, and the long, slow climb Tylendel had made back into the Heralds’ trust afterward.

They’ve already pulled open that wound today, however, so Vanyel deflects that thought and returns his attention to the map, and the trail of villages leading to the base of a familiar mountain.

 _I’m not letting this mage wipe out hundreds of people just to pick a fight with me in the middle of nowhere,_ Vanyel thinks grimly. Aloud, he says, “We need to pick a new battleground.”

⛯

“Were you really planning to leave without telling me?”

Tylendel had touched his mind before entering the stable, careful to avoid startling him, so Vanyel knows he’s there already. It doesn’t make him feel any less caught out.

“I didn’t want to wake you. You need the rest.” He’d woken up before dawn to find Tylendel sprawled across the bed, as usual, with his head pillowed on Vanyel’s chest and an arm around his waist. Extricating himself had been hard enough without Tylendel sleepy-eyed and rough-voiced, offering a hundred reasons to stay.

He finishes saddling Yfandes, checking the girth strap and confirming that she’s comfortable before he turns around. Tylendel has his arms crossed over his chest, and looks remarkably put-together considering that he must have dressed in a hurry on finding Vanyel already gone from their room. His hair is a tumble, but no more than usual, and his eyes are alert. Vanyel’s heart tries to twist, and he refuses to let it.

Tylendel crosses the straw-strewn floor and doesn’t bother with circumspection or pretense, sliding his arms around Vanyel’s waist to embrace him. He’d have checked that no one was around, Vanyel knows - or hopes - before doing anything so public, but of the two of them, Tylendel is less prone to worry about what anyone else thinks, so he might have simply decided he didn’t care.

“We’ve hardly reunited, and you’re already riding off to leave me behind,” Tylendel grouses, holding Vanyel as though he has no intention of releasing him.

“This is where you’re supposed to make some comment about watching me go,” Vanyel murmurs, his throat thick and chest tight.

“I’d rather watch you stay,” Tylendel replies, but he relents with a quiet sigh. “I’m just sorry we’re being pulled apart again.”

“Only for a few days.”

Their plan is for Vanyel to go ahead, to prepare the choke-point they’ve chosen for a mage battle, and for Tylendel to remain for a few days more, convincing the Karsites that nothing has changed and they still have a Herald-Mage defending the fort.

“I’ll be right behind you.” He thinks Tylendel is saying it as much for himself as Vanyel, convincing himself to let go. His cheek is resting on Vanyel’s shoulder, face turned in against Vanyel’s neck. “Be careful.”

“Always.” They aren’t making it any easier on each other, which Vanyel knows even before he says, “I’ve had enough of saying goodbye to you for a lifetime.”

Tylendel laughs softly, and Vanyel feels his warm breath just above the high collar of his Whites. “I know the feeling.”

He has to go. Before they’re caught like this; before the sun rises and Vanyel can’t slip away in the dark; before he convinces himself to stay.

 _:’Fandes,:_ he says finally, aching a little at what he’s asking. _:I might need a push.:_

 _:We were going to give you another moment,:_ she answers, and he hears the sympathy in her voice. _:Are you ready, Chosen?:_

He can’t bring himself to answer that, but she seems to understand, and turns her head to nudge her nose against his back. Tylendel lifts his head, eyes blinking open, and offers a rueful smile. “I know. You’ve got a long way to go.”

They’re close enough that a tilt of Tylendel’s head is all it takes to bring them together for a kiss, and they stay frozen like that, just breathing together, for long enough that Vanyel starts to wonder if Yfandes will have to break them up. Then Tylendel pulls away and crosses his arms again, as though he knows he’ll only reach out again if he doesn’t.

“Safe travels, _ashke_ ,” he says. “Wind to thy wings.”

Vanyel doesn’t trust himself to answer, so he mounts Yfandes and doesn’t let himself look back.

He’s brooding and he knows it, but Yfandes doesn’t call him on it, just lets him be as the two of them slip out through the postern gate and ride east. Once they’re far enough out that her hooves won’t kick up road-dust to betray them, she settles into the ground-eating gait that will carry them farther and faster than any horse could travel.

It’s surprisingly comfortable, and Vanyel is as familiar with her steps as his own after so long together, so he shifts his weight to make himself easier for her to bear, and they head for the mountain pass.

He’s lost in his thoughts for most of the day, only checking in occasionally to see to Yfandes’ comfort, and scouting around them constantly for any sign of danger. They don’t have any reason to expect trouble on the road, but this is still a war zone, and Vanyel wouldn’t be surprised by it, either. Enough of the villagers on both sides of the border have lost their homes and livelihoods to drive them to banditry, and a lone rider makes a deceptively easy target.

By evening he recognizes the terrain, and calculates that they’ll be able to make the abandoned house before they lose the light, which Yfandes confirms. He remembers riding this way with Tylendel—remembers, too, the night before they’d left, tangled together in front of the fire.

_”Van,” Tylendel gasped, arching into the slick press of Vanyel’s fingers and tongue, hauling him up until they were pressed together everywhere. His legs folded around Vanyel’s waist, pulling him in even closer against the cradle of Tylendel’s hips. “Enough. I want you in me.”_

_“We have to ride tomorrow,” Vanyel warned, reluctance and desire threaded through his voice in equal measure, and Tylendel chuckled._

_“So go slowly. I want to feel you, before I spend weeks being chaste with you right there beside me, close enough to touch. I’ll tell you when to stop.” His hands were in Vanyel’s hair, urging him forward, his heels digging into Vanyel’s flanks and breath a whisper against his ear. “Slowly. Make it last.”_

_“‘Lendel,” Vanyel groaned, and it didn’t really matter that it was a bad idea, that their timing was wrong, because he was sinking into slippery-wet heat and Tylendel’s head was thrown back, his eyes squeezed shut and chest heaving as he panted for breath, and it felt like coming home._

Vanyel blinks out of his reverie, and notices the sun is lower in the sky than the last time he’d checked. He stretches carefully as much as he can, reaching out to Yfandes.

_:Sorry, love. I was woolgathering.:_

_:You were mooning,:_ she teases, arching her neck to look back at him over her shoulder. _:I don’t mind. We’re nearly there.:_

 _:I’ve been_ very _poor company,:_ he apologizes wryly, taking a moment to scout the area again and make sure they’re in the clear. _:You deserve better.:_

 _:It’s been good to see you like this,:_ she answers unexpectedly. When he queries, she explains haltingly, _:You protect yourself, when you’re on your own. I sometimes forget how different you can be until you’re with him again.:_

He dismounts when they reach the stream so Yfandes can drink and rest, and strips off her tack to carry it back on foot. _:You’ve done all the work today,:_ he reminds her. _:It’s not far from here.:_

The abandoned house is almost a proper waystation now, with a stack of chopped wood for the fire and a cookpot scoured clean for use. Vanyel makes camp while Yfandes rolls in what meager grass she can find, and he brushes her down when she returns, flattering her teasingly as he does about how beautiful she is.

He hadn’t been entirely honest about Yfandes doing all the work; he’s a good rider, better than Tylendel, which is one reason why he’s the one going ahead, but it’s still been a long day in the saddle and he aches. _Getting old_ , he thinks ruefully, and hears Yfandes snort in the back of his mind.

Vanyel now has quite a few fond memories of this house, and after he’s eaten and washed and settled Yfandes for the night, he lets himself drift on them, already half-asleep the moment he beds down next to the fire. He remembers Tylendel glowing gold in the firelight, and the scent of their sweat mingled on his skin, the feel of muscles flexing under his hands as they moved together. He thinks of Tylendel’s smile, and his gentle hands, and the way it had surprised Vanyel every time he’d laughed.

He hadn’t let himself reach for Tylendel after they’d parted, and now they’re far enough from each other that he can’t easily slip into Tylendel’s mind for conversation. Vanyel still has the sense of him, weary and calm, the slight echo of loneliness he can feel through their bond. It’s enough to know that Tylendel is safe, and Vanyel doesn’t need to bother him without any reason.

He imagines his bedding still smells of Tylendel, of the two of them together, and he really is wallowing now, but there’s no one else here to know. His hand slides slowly over his chest, and before he can overthink it, he’s shielding Yfandes out and closing his eyes, breathing in the faint scent and rolling onto his side to bury his face against the blanket.

He’d thought Yfandes was already asleep, but there’s a sharp jab of alarm and a worried tap against his shield. Sighing, Vanyel lets his hand drop away and lets her in.

 _:Nothing’s wrong, ladylove,:_ he assures her. He hadn’t been involved enough yet that his aura gives him away, which makes it slightly awkward when tries to explain. _:I was just...mooning again.:_

There’s a beat of silence while she deciphers that, and he’s physically braced for her to tease him, for her knowing laughter and risqué commentary—but then she retreats and puts her own wall between them, granting him privacy for the night. He exhales shakily, sending a wordless burst of love and gratitude in her direction, and withdraws again.

He doesn’t shield entirely. He isn’t reaching for Tylendel to share his thoughts, but he still leaves that connection open, Tylendel’s presence a distant glow in his mind, familiar and beloved. He wraps himself in memories as his hand drifts lower, mapping everywhere Tylendel’s lips had touched the last time they were together, teasing himself into slow-blooming arousal.

He’s just begun to stroke himself when he feels Tylendel’s awareness shift, a thrum like a plucked lute string running along the bond between them, and Vanyel gasps as his hips jerk forward, his hand tightening reflexively. He barely holds back a moan, teeth sinking into his lower lip, and that - along with the wash of pleasure through his nerves - seems to give him away.

He feels Tylendel startle, so surprised that he actually drops out of their connection for a moment, but then it surges back to life, stronger than before, anchored and steady. It doesn’t occur to him to stop for a moment, even with the light caress of Tylendel’s disbelieving amusement, the incredulous _you’re doing this now?_ that Vanyel imagines he can almost hear.

It doesn’t occur to him because beneath the playful exasperation, Vanyel can feel longing and hunger echoing his own, and because Tylendel has left himself wide open for Vanyel, sharing as much as he can.

He ought to make it better, he thinks, he ought to draw it out, or...but he doesn’t want to stop, and Tylendel only offers encouragement, his attention now fully on Vanyel. He rolls onto his back and rocks into his fist, biting his lip again and letting the pulse of Tylendel’s desire wash over him.

He thinks he’s imagining it when he feels the whisper of lips against his throat, that he’s conjuring up memories so vividly they feel real, but then he has the impression of hands pressed against his chest, a thigh sliding between his legs, and he realizes they’re not coming from him at all.

They’ve done this before—they’d been teenagers when Vanyel’s Gifts woke, abruptly and violently, and even with the time needed to regain each other’s trust and heal, they’ve had years and years to learn all of the ways they can share pleasure. It still takes Vanyel’s breath away, the ghost of Tylendel’s tongue tracing a line down his throat, the tease of a fingertip down his spine, low, lower, and then a sense of heat and pressure closing over him that undoes him in a moment, shattering him into climax.

There’s a distinctly smug air radiating from Tylendel, and it’s satisfaction and warmth now, more than desire, which lets Vanyel know that Tylendel isn’t looking for him to return the favor. He is, in fact, pushed away gently once his heart has calmed, with a phantom kiss brushed across his forehead. As the tension bleeds out of him and he starts to drift again, he thinks he can just hear Tylendel whisper, _sleep_.

⛯

Vanyel’s first task is to reorganize and rally the Valdemaran forces based on where he and Tylendel believe the Karsite mage will be, which is another reason it’s Herald-Mage Shadowstalker Demonsbane riding ahead. He’d argued that Tylendel was better at this sort of thing, but they don’t have time for charm and trust to overcome opposition right now, and those are Tylendel’s political weapons. Vanyel’s is his reputation, as a person and a Herald-Mage.

 _”Wrap them in ice, love,”_ Tylendel had told him cheerfully when they’d laid their plan. Yfandes had been amused, knowing the same thing Vanyel does; Tylendel has never met the cold, distant figure Vanyel cuts in war stories and songs. When Tylendel is around, Vanyel always thaws.

He can get the Heralds behind him, which is the most important thing, because he doesn’t have time to wait for permission from the crown or anyone higher up. He’s stripping defenses and resources away from places that need them, gambling that they’ll be needed elsewhere first, and he doesn’t like to think about what might happen if they’re wrong.

He hadn’t realized the hardest part of all of this would be riding back onto the front lines, and having to hold back. He’s used to fighting with everything he has, which is partly why his reputation is what it is, but he can’t do that now, not without giving away the entire game. They’re positioning pieces on the board, moving hinds and hounds, but Vanyel has to remain concealed for a few days more.

He fights with his other Gifts instead of magic whenever he can, shielding his Mage-Gift, and when he does resort to magic, he pulls his blows. It’s precise work, calculating how much he can afford to give rather than repeatedly draining himself dry, and just as tiring.

He feels guilty every time the casualty reports come in, but if anyone else notices, they don’t say anything to him. He’s not sure how much of a difference it makes, honestly; his changes in tactics tend to be defensive rather than destructive, and he’s integrating more with the garrisons and other Heralds instead of acting alone. It’s possible the casualty reports wouldn’t be any different. There’s no way for him to know.

He’s helping to pack up the camp before they move east to join up with Vanyel’s other recruits when the demon attacks.

There’s nothing else it could be, that oily darkness sliding over him, the impression of cracked leather wings and malicious hunger. There’s no chance of hiding anymore, not with an actual demon here. Their time has run out. Vanyel has readied a strike without a target - _where is the blasted thing?_ \- and raised a shield all around the camp before he understands exactly what he’s feeling.

The demon isn’t here, and it isn’t attacking him. It’s after Tylendel.

Within the same breath, pain rips through him in a hot line from his stomach to his throat, and he thinks _no no no_ and only knows he’s stumbled and fallen when he gasps for breath and inhales dust. He thinks he knows what’s happened, and he doesn’t know whether the knowledge is coming from Tylendel, or from the memory of Jessa’s uneasy warning a week past.

 _Corruption._ They’d had Vanyel out of the fort for days, chasing down minor demons. Long enough to slip something in, a trap waiting to be sprung. Someone at the fort had been possessed.

He knows that Tylendel is still alive—Vanyel feels an echo of every Herald-Mage’s death like a hollow in his stomach, an empty loss without a source. Tylendel’s would tear his heart out of his body.

He also knows that this isn’t a battle; it’s an ambush.

“Herald? Herald, are you…? Get a Healer!” Vanyel hears, just before he’s rolled over onto his back. His skin is on fire, slick magic everywhere, drowning him - _Tylendel_ \- and he knows, he _knows_ , that Tylendel is losing the fight.

He drops the shield, the bolt he’d readied to strike, and gathers all of his power into the center of himself, trying to push it out where it’s needed. There are knives in his lungs now, fresh flames burning his chest, and the wings are beating harder. Vanyel coughs up blood - _dust, only dust_ \- and pushes harder.

 _Gods damn you, ’Lendel, take it_. He squeezes his eyes closed to focus, trying to navigate the dizzying impressions ( _wings knives fire darkness_ ) in order to find an opening, some way he can force himself through.

“What’s wrong with him? Are we under attack?”

“There was a mage-barrier up all around for a second, but it’s gone now. No sign of the Karsites, but I don’t know what else this could be.”

They’d worked hard, and for a long time, to trust that Tylendel would never take Vanyel’s life-force without permission. Offering is different; there’s a give-and-take that’s easy to fall into when they’re together, or within each other’s range. Tylendel is too far away right now for Vanyel to reach, and all he can do is plead and hope and _push_ , urgently, toward the flickering light he’s terrified will go out.

“Where’s that Healer!”

There’s a moment that seems to stretch forever, a single instant after Tylendel reaches for more power and doesn’t find it, when he finds Vanyel instead, and hesitates. Then there’s a sensation like a needle being threaded through his navel and _pulled_ , and magic pours out of him, surging through their connection to Tylendel.

Someone skids to a halt beside him, which Vanyel is mostly aware of because his ragged lungs fill with dust again instead of air. He feels shredded from the inside, and he doesn’t want to think about why, doesn’t let himself think of anything except that Tylendel is fighting back.

“There’s nothing _wrong_ with him,” he hears the new arrival say, and he’s aware of Healing energy washing over him and out again just as quickly, funneled away along with everything else. “No, wait. There’s some kind of...like he’s being _leeched_ , there’s something draining him, I don’t know what it is or if I can seal it off, but I can try…”

That jolts Vanyel back into his own body, and he latches onto a green robe and pulls as hard as he can. “Lifebond,” he gasps, before he’s coughing up another lung, and he feels the Healer stop, going still as she processes that.

“All right,” she says briskly a second later. “You’re feeding it?” He nods, and feels darkness rising again, although this time it’s not the demon, it’s his own consciousness fading. “No, stay with me,” the Healer says sharply, and pinches him, which brings him shuddering back. “You just told me you have something to fight for; don’t give up on it now.”

 _:Chosen,:_ he hears Yfandes say, and he knows how she feels about this and why, her fear that they’ll go too far ( _and she might be right_ ), but she also knows that he’d rather die than lose Tylendel, and she’s offering him a lifeline.

Her energy is all he needs to stay afloat, and the Healer hasn’t stopped working, even though she can’t Heal _him_ , even though there’s nothing wrong. She’s making the channel more efficient somehow, putting her own power into it as Tylendel siphons it away.

There’s the swelling surge of a mage strike somewhere in his mind, and Vanyel nearly blacks out once more and is pinched again, hard, to bring him back around, just as he feels the tension release. Tylendel is fading in his mind, losing consciousness, but the demon is gone and he can feel a distant echo of his own heartbeat, a wordless whisper of gratitude before he’s alone in his own mind again, lying in the dirt surrounded by worried faces.

He assesses whether or not he’s about to faint as well, and Yfandes wordlessly tosses him a little more of her energy, enough that he can struggle up onto his elbows. The Healer tries to keep him down for a second and then gives up and supports him into sitting up, her arm around his shoulders.

Herald Augry is crouched down across from him, gruff and worried. “How’s Tylendel?”

Vanyel shakes his head, unable to answer. Augry’s a grizzled border veteran with salt-and-pepper hair and a stout build, a practical tactician, and one of the few people in this camp who treats Vanyel with respect that hasn’t tipped over into reverence.

Augry claps him on the shoulder and squeezes. “He must have his feet under him, or you’d be in a lot sorrier shape than you are. No one ever gives us a scare quite like the two of you.”

It’s probably true; but then, the two of them have also been covering posts for six Herald-Mages between them. There’s a reason they have so many close calls. Vanyel feels himself sagging back into the support of the Healer, exhausted now that the fight is over.

“Come on lad, up you get,” Augry says, getting his shoulder under Vanyel’s arm to haul him to his feet. “We’ll be moving out in a candlemark, but you can sleep it off until then.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” the Healer says, supporting Vanyel on his other side as they walk - or in his case, stagger like a drunk - past the curious eyes of the camp. “Lifebonds are so rare, and there haven’t been many opportunities to study them in these conditions, from a Healing perspective. There’s so much we could learn if we had time to…”

Augry, Vanyel remembers, had been at Haven when Tylendel had torn open Vanyel’s channels and he’d been a mess of untrained Gifts, linked directly to Tylendel’s unstable mind. Thankfully, Augry doesn’t offer any comment on the Healer’s half-wistful, half-resigned musing, and Vanyel is too busy putting one foot in front of the other to answer.

“You’re very kind, Lady, but we’re nearly there,” he hears Augry say, and opens his eyes to find Yfandes keeping pace next to them, with another Companion who must be Augry’s on their other side. _This must be the oddest procession the camp has ever seen_ , he thinks, and then he’s being lowered onto a cot, and sinks into oblivion.

⛯

A rhythmic, metallic clink draws Vanyel out of sleep, and when he blinks awake, he sees Augry next to his cot, idly tapping the tip of his scabbard against the clasp on Vanyel’s pack. Augry stops when Vanyel frowns in confusion, and some of the lines in his weathered face relax.

“There you are. We’re ready to move out if you think you can manage it.”

Vanyel looks at the pack sitting on the ground, still sleep-fogged and muddled, and Augry gives him a tight smile with a hint of sadness in it.

“If you’re wound as tight as Tylendel was when he was here, we know better than to startle you awake. That’s a mistake you only make once,” Augry says dryly, and offers Vanyel a cup of water. “Any news?”

Vanyel gropes for the bond, but it’s silent. He shakes his head, busy gulping up the water, and exhales a shaky breath when he’s finished. He should have reported at once after the attack, but he’d been so far out of it, he hadn’t remembered. “It wasn’t an attack, at least not from the army. Possession, I think. Someone inside the fort.”

Augry grows still, his brows drawing together. “Taken care of?”

Vanyel nods, and wordlessly holds the cup out for more water. Augry refills it from a canteen and sits down on his pack while Vanyel drinks.

“Suppose I should ask if this changes the plan,” he says, gaze shrewd.

Vanyel thinks it over for a moment, and then shakes his head again. “It’s still the best we have,” he answers honestly. “We can’t let them drive us back in the west, and if we’re right, a lot of people could die if I don’t head him off first.”

Augry raises his eyebrows. “Make that a ‘we’,” he says. “Whether there’s one or two of you, you’ll have us behind you. Sounds like the timing might change a bit, though. Can’t imagine anyone riding hard to meet us after the hells it looks like you just went through.”

Vanyel winces, and his hand goes unbidden to his chest, which had burned like being stabbed through with a fire poker. “No,” he says quietly. “I think we might be on our own.”

“Healer Tamrin’s still going on about the papers she could write about you, if we weren’t in the middle of a damned war,” Augry tells him, shaking his head. “I haven’t told her it wouldn’t likely do much good. I haven’t seen anyone else work the way the two of you do, and I’m not sure I’d care to.”

Before Vanyel can come up with a reply, Augry stands and says, “Still, we’re damned lucky to have you. Take a minute if you need one, and come out when you’re ready.”

It’s only once Vanyel is alone that the guilt finally hits him. He’d left Tylendel unprotected with an enemy at his back, while Vanyel is leagues away, out of reach. He knows it’s no different than anything else over the past year, but it feels different, all the same. This time, he hadn’t been stationed somewhere distant, a helpless witness. This time, he’d ridden away.

There’s more, too, beneath the surface of that, knowledge that sits like a stone in his stomach. _That ambush was meant for me._

He knows Yfandes is there before her warm, soft nose bumps his shoulder, and he gives himself a second to lay his hand on her neck and lose himself in her all-forgiving gaze. She waits for him to touch her mind, and then she nudges him again, taking a step closer to stand over him.

 _:You couldn’t have known. None of us did.:_ Yfandes arches her neck protectively over his head, and Vanyel leans into her briefly, his arm across her mane.

 _:Gala?:_ he asks, and tries not to sound as plaintive as he feels, hoping for news.

_:They’re both alive, that’s all I know. You can probably tell more. You’ve always been sensitive to each other.:_

It’s the closest he thinks she’ll get to disapproval of what he did—there’s a lecture she must be holding in check, likely because she knows it wouldn’t change anything if she gave it. He’d still make the same decision, in a heartbeat, and damn the consequences.

Enough of that bleeds over into his thoughts that she sighs, her warm breath whuffling in his hair. _:You’re both stubborn.:_

 _That_ is entirely true, but somehow instead of making him feel guiltier, Vanyel finds himself smiling slightly. _:Am I such a trial?:_

 _:You know you are,:_ she answers sternly, and dances back a few steps to give him room to stand. _:Can you ride, or are you going to fall off if you try?:_

 _:You’d never let me,:_ he says fondly, stroking her neck while he waits for the room to steady under his feet. He sobers in the next moment, fingers tangling in her mane. _:’Fandes...that felt bad.:_

She’s silent for a moment, then butts him gently, sympathetically, with her head against his side. _:I know. But they’re still alive.:_

 _For now_ , he thinks, and wishes he hadn’t, but there’s no point in avoiding what’s been in the back of his mind all along. Everything in him wants to ride west, back to the fort and Tylendel.

After another moment, he’s steady enough to mount, and Yfandes steps carefully, letting him find his balance before she picks up her pace and carries him east.

⛯

Jessa Corey catches up with them five days later, riding in with her entire troop. They look nearly as bedraggled as Vanyel remembers from the day they’d met at the fort, but they all seem to be in good spirits, only looking forward to a wash and a good meal.

“I have a message for you,” Jessa tells him when she dismounts, and he doesn’t need to ask who’s sent it.

“How bad is it?” he asks, bracing himself for the answer. He hasn’t been able to sense anything from Tylendel beyond knowing he’s still alive, not even pain and exhaustion. Everything feels muted and distant, like being underwater.

“I’m under strict instructions not to tell you that, but he said you’d better not be beating yourself up over it, or he’ll do it himself when he sees you,” Jessa tells him, and shrugs. “He wasn’t making a lot of sense; the Healer’s got him drugged to the teeth and we left two days after the demon showed itself. You know about that, right? He said you would.”

Vanyel nods. The underwater feeling makes sense, now, if Tylendel is wrapped in the cotton batting of pain drugs. Vanyel remembers too well what that’s like.

“I asked if he had anything he wanted to add onto that, just between us, but he said you’d damn well better already know,” Jessa continues with a crooked grin.

Vanyel tries not to exhale too obviously. _I love you too,_ ashke, he thinks, a dull ache in his chest. _Please be all right_.

“The fort?” he asks. Tylendel can’t be in any shape to defend it right now, but if Jessa’s troop was sent away, they must believe they can withstand the siege unaided.

“All those set-spells you put into place, the days before you left? That’s what they were for, right? To make it look a mage was still around, after you’d both left? They’re working like a charm. I wouldn’t have known the difference myself. They’ll hold out just fine, and to be honest, I think the Karsites are spooked. They expected that demon to finish you off, and it hasn’t.”

 _It nearly did_ , Vanyel thinks, and suppresses a shudder at the memory of leathery wings and sulphur.

“Anyway, we decided to cause a little trouble on our way over here; swung south into the disputed lands and did as much damage as we could along the way. They should have plenty to keep them busy for now.”

Little wonder Jessa’s troop looks the way they do. Vanyel reassesses her, his respect rising another notch. “You took a big risk.”

“Well, that’s not the only message I’ve brought, and this one’s more urgent,” Jessa replies, her expression turning serious. “He says there’s been a change of plan.”

“We thought there might be,” says Herald Augry, coming up beside Vanyel and offering his hand for Jessa to clasp. It’s a friendly greeting, without introductions, so Vanyel guesses they know one another already. “Shall we take this to the command tent? There’s a map there, and I’d bet we can find some tea.”

Jessa agrees gratefully, and they pass around cups of hot tea while she explains what Tylendel apparently has in mind.

“There’s a bluff here, to the southeast in the disputed lands. We can reach it from this road here, which runs along the cliff until it turns here where it meets the Terilee River. The Karsites will be coming up from the south along that route. We’re supposed to hold them off here as long as we can, until this mage you’re looking for raises up whatever demons he’s waiting to set loose on you. Then Tylendel says to turn them back.”

Vanyel blinks. “On _Karse?_ ” The damage they could do to civilians, to Mageborn...he loathes this war and those on the other side of the border after so much fighting, but the thought of giving demons free rein to destroy a countryside turns his stomach.

“They won’t make it far,” Jessa assures him, and draws a line to the south, beside the river. “Only to here.”

Her finger trails another winding path west, and Vanyel realizes that’s where Tylendel will be, the other arm of a pincer closing on the Karsites, using their own demons against them.

Augry whistles. “Could that work? You’d need to keep shields up for a good long while against whatever the Karsites throw at you, and then you’d still have the demons to deal with afterward.”

Vanyel rubs his jaw, and feels the rasp of stubble he hasn’t bothered to shave for the past few days. “’Lendel knows the terrain better than I do,” he admits. “If he’s chosen this spot, it probably means there’s a node we can tap nearby.” He tries to remember the map they’d laid out before he’d left, and thinks there had been a node close by, with a ley line running along the river. “But…”

He hesitates to say it, but there’s a reality they all need to face. “This plan depends on reinforcements coming in at the right moment. If ’Lendel doesn’t make it, we’ll be trapped against the cliff face. They’d be able to pick us off single-file if we tried to retreat. It’s a last stand.”

Augry raises an eyebrow. “I’m not arguing with you, but I’ve been posted with Tylendel off and on for the past six months, and I think it’s fair to say we’ve gotten to know each other a little. Do you really believe, if you’re facing off against this mage who’s been after you for a year, and he knows we’ve got our backs to a wall, that he won’t come through?”

Vanyel looks at Jessa. She knows better than any of them the extent of Tylendel’s injuries, while Vanyel can only make an educated guess. “I don’t know that he’ll have a choice.”

Jessa cocks her head. “Would it stop you?”

He knows the answer to that, down to his bones. Augry must know it too, must see it on his face, because he claps Vanyel on the shoulder. “The whole damned Karsite army wouldn’t keep him from you, lad,” he says firmly. “Now, if that’s the only objection, we’ve got some preparations to make.”

⛯

Herald Augry whistles through his teeth, long and low. “It looks like you were right.”

 _I almost wish we hadn’t been_. Vanyel scans down the long line of Karsite troops winding along the road from the south, trying to spot the blood mage. He can’t yet, but there are so many soldiers and horses that it’s difficult to pick anyone out in the cloud of dust that surrounds them.

He and Augry are both Farseers, but this is the first time they’ve caught sight of the procession from Karse. They’d seen glimpses of troop movements, other garrisons on the move, but not this central force.

The size of it alone is daunting, but not surprising when Vanyel thinks about it. He’d been estimating the scope of an army sent to meet him out in the open, at the base of the mountain, but this is considerably greater than that. This is the force needed to roll like a boulder across the Disputed Lands and Valdemar, crushing opposition and slaughtering entire villages to feed the power of a blood mage who won’t afford delays.

It wouldn’t have made any difference to the number of troops he’d been able to muster on their side of the border, but he still wishes he’d been prepared for it.

“They’ll be here within a day,” Vanyel estimates, pulling his Farsight back to follow the length of the road leading down to the base of the bluff. “Less if they plan to make camp between the river and the cliff.”

Augry grunts. “It’s what I’d do. An army that size, they’ll want to hold to the river for water as long as they can.” He shakes himself, releasing his own Farsight before he turns a sharp gaze on Vanyel. “How long can you hold them?”

Vanyel’s look back is wry. “Is there an answer you’re looking for?”

“I’d prefer ‘as long as I need to’, but I’ll take the truth.” Augry rubs his jaw. “No; to be honest, I’d rather the truth. What are our chances?”

Vanyel looks out over the terrain at the base of the cliff, where they’ll be pinned down against the Karsite army. If he could ambush them, hit them hard enough to call a retreat, they might have better odds...but they can’t risk the blood mage recognizing who he’s up against and raising demons too soon, or their plan won’t work.

“A half-day, maybe. Four, five candlemarks. Six or seven at the most.” Vanyel shakes his head. “Not long enough.”

“We can send Corey’s lot out to raid, that might buy us some time. Not much, and they’d be caught on the wrong side of things when the fireworks start. That army can’t retreat easily, so once they’re down there, they’ll be committed as much as we are.” Augry looks at him sideways again. “How far out will you be able to spot our reinforcements?”

Vanyel exhales, gauging the terrain and the route Tylendel is meant to be taking. “Three days’ ride. Two if they take it hard, but they’ll be exhausted by then.” He shakes his head and repeats, “Not long enough.”

“He might Gate in,” Augry suggests. “Lose the element of surprise, but it’d get them here in a hurry.”

“He won’t.” Vanyel doesn’t know whether Tylendel has raised a Gate since his first disastrous attempt, but he’s certain Tylendel won’t risk incapacitating Vanyel by opening one so close. Even setting that aside, unless Tylendel has physically been here, he won’t have any way to anchor a Gate to their location, which still means time for him to ride in from elsewhere.

 _Where are you,_ ashke _?_

There’s a chance Tylendel is concealing himself from the mage, and from Vanyel as well, but it’s so slim that Vanyel discounts it almost out of hand. Tylendel knows they need to get the timing right; he won’t simply be waiting out of sight. That’s if he could even hide from Vanyel to begin with.

“Maybe he’ll Fetch himself in,” Augry says with grim humor, and Vanyel is already shaking his head when his breath catches, and he really thinks through that thought.

_:’Fandes...could he?:_

He can sense reluctance before she replies, not just uncertainty, and discomfort with his question, but she still answers. _:He’s strong, and his combination of Gifts is rare. I don’t know of anyone else who could, but if Gala were helping...Companions can do something similar, when we have to.:_

Vanyel’s stomach rolls, and he almost wishes he hadn’t asked. Swallowing against his dry throat, he tells Augry, “Yfandes says...maybe.”

Augry looks stunned, and then nearly as queasy as Vanyel feels. “Meant it as a joke,” he says faintly. “Would he really?”

_The whole damned Karsite army wouldn’t keep him from you._

“I don’t know,” Vanyel answers. “I don’t think we should count on it.”

“We don’t have much else to count on,” Augry points out. “It’s either take them on by the cliff, or let the Karsites drive us back into Valdemar, and our chances won’t get much better than this.”

He’s right, and as little as he likes their odds now, he likes the villagers’ chances even less if the Valdemaran troops can’t hold them here at the border. It will be devastation and slaughter all the way to the west, and that’s not a choice Vanyel could ever make.

“Let’s get everyone down the trail and set up defenses,” Vanyel says finally. “We’ll hold them as long as we can.”

⛯

“Well, they know we’re here,” Augry says unnecessarily, as a shout goes up along the Karsite lines and they begin to spill out into battle formation.

“Archers!” he hears Jessa shout, and the first volley goes up, arrows singing overhead to fall just shy of the Karsites. It’s going to be a bloodbath, Vanyel thinks with a sinking stomach, and then he stops thinking about it and gets to work.

They’re buying time more than anything, trying to keep the Karsites trapped in a column against the river so the entire army can’t sweep in and overwhelm them. It’s not going to work for long; even as Jessa orders the first line to drop and second to ready, the Karsites are raising their shields for a cavalry charge.

Vanyel catches sight of several wagons being sent sluggishly forward along the Karsite line, and breaks off his search for the foreign mage to find Augry, who looks grim.

“They’ve got siege weapons,” Augry says; he’s seen them too. Vanyel had known they might; ordinarily it wouldn’t matter on a joined battlefield, but a catapult will bring down a cliff face as well as a fortress wall.

“Can you Farsee and direct the archers? I’ll catch the boulders.” He’s still trying not to use his Mage-Gift as much as he can; they don’t want the Karsite mage to realize what he’s really up against until the last possible moment.

He hears Augry shout, then Jessa, relaying instructions, and focuses his attention on the catapults lining up just behind the first rows of soldiers.

 _Here we go._ He’s not especially good at Fetching, but he can knock the boulders off-course when the catapults fire, and cushion the blows as they impact against the cliff and drop onto those below. He tries not to remember Tylendel yanking an entire battering ram across enemy lines. _’Lendel, where are you…_

Fire arrows soar through the air overhead, thudding into one of the catapults. Vanyel is ready to give them a little encouragement when there’s a whoosh and crackle, and the wooden frame goes up in a rush of flames.

“Got a touch of Firestarting,” Augry calls over when he sees Vanyel staring. “Incoming!”

Yfandes wheels back from the volley of arrows as the Karsites return fire. Vanyel grips her with his knees to hold his balance and catches another boulder, deflecting it to one side before it can smash against the cliff. He hears the crash as the cavalry lines join, and the shouted command that sends another volley of fire arrows overhead toward the next catapult.

In the chaos, he nearly misses the jolt in his stomach, the flare like a star winking in the distance that’s gone again in the next moment. Then he feels it again, and is nearly distracted from the hail of levinbolts that rain down around them.

 _:Shield!:_ Yfandes snaps out, a half-second before Vanyel is in motion, one hand flying up to send the levinbolts rebounding into the air.

 _There you are_ , he thinks grimly, scanning again for the mage. There’s another shower of levinbolts, timed at the same moment one of the remaining catapults lets fly.

He gets shields up against the levinbolts and barely catches the boulder, halting it just above the ground and lowering it with force alone. He’s about to give the game away, but it’s better than letting catapults and mage-lightning smash them all into pieces.

His stomach is knotting up and he can’t figure out why; can only spare half his attention for it in between Augry’s shouted orders and the mage’s assaults. _:Yfandes. Spell?:_

It’s the best he can do, but she picks up the flavor of his distress and he can sense her working on it, even as she sends them charging to defend the left flank. _:I don’t think it’s external. Poison?:_

He curses and smacks a flight of arrows out of the air, leaving Jessa’s troop clear to push the Karsites back toward the river. Augry’s set the last of the catapults ablaze, but the Karsites have numbers on their side and are pressing their advantage.

“Can you keep that mage off us?” Augry shouts, his own Companion executing a tidy leap that brings them together again near the center of the Valdemaran force.

 _For now_ , he thinks grimly, but he only nods and raises his hands again.

Then he doubles over and gasps. Yfandes whickers, trying to look back at him and watch her footing at the same time as they dart past the cavalry clash. He yanks his sword free and helps to clear their path, too much going on for him to concentrate on whatever’s tying him into knots.

 _:Chosen!:_ Yfandes warns, her attention dragging his to the burning catapults, which are now rolling forward toward the Valdemaran archers. They’re slower than fireball spells, but no less effective.

Vanyel turns toward them and sees Augry signaling, arms waving frantically. “Leave them! Focus on the mage!”

“I won’t be able to hold the defenses,” Vanyel calls back, hesitating.

“If you don’t take out that damned mage, we’re all going to die here anyway. I’d rather go out for something. Let’s take one more with us.” Augry looks at him hard. “Are you injured?”

Vanyel realizes his hand is over his stomach, and he shakes his head, pulling it away. Augry is right; poison won’t kill him before the mage does, and they’re the only thing standing between this army and Valdemar. Whatever this is, it’s slow-acting. It feels like a needle, stabbing and stretching and pulling taut, then stabbing again. It feels like…

His breath catches. It feels like Tylendel.

 _Gods, he’s actually doing it._ He hadn’t really believed it possible, and now that he knows he’s feeling Tylendel pull himself repeatedly out of the world and back into it, one leap at a time, he wants to curl over and vomit.

 _:Not the time,:_ Yfandes reminds him, with a mental kick to propel him back into motion, and Vanyel scans one more time, opening himself up as much as he dares, to look for the Karsite mage.

Tylendel must be close now, for Vanyel to feel him this clearly, but it’s difficult to tell when Tylendel only surfaces for brief flashes before he disappears again. He’s not here yet, but Vanyel can’t hide anymore, so they’ll have to risk early engagement and hope that Tylendel arrives in time to close the trap.

 _:There!:_ Yfandes sends, along with the glimpse she’s caught of the mage, far back along the Karsite column and surrounded by soldiers. Vanyel centers, grounds, and calls down lightning.

He doesn’t have a hope of getting through the mage’s shields, but it gets his attention, and the Karsites around him scatter, the center of the line breaking into chaos. He does it again, and then flings a few levinbolts for good measure, testing the mage’s defenses and keeping him focused on the new threat.

Warmth expands in his chest like a bubble breaking the water’s surface, and he gasps, snapping another shield up just as a shockwave rolls forward to batter against it. A half-breath later Tylendel slips into his mind as though Vanyel’s shields aren’t even there, taking in the situation and sifting through the information Vanyel tosses in his direction.

 _:Miss me?:_ Tylendel asks, dropping his own shield over Vanyel while Vanyel counters the mage’s strike with a blast of his own. It’s an absurd question, and Vanyel shoves a general feeling of relief and exasperation in his direction and opens up his senses to let Tylendel scout through his eyes.

 _:He’s going to bring the cliff down,:_ Yfandes warns suddenly, and Vanyel sees the next shockwave go over his head, crashing into the rock wall behind them.

 _:He can try,:_ Tylendel answers, forbidding. He’s sharing both of their thoughts now, but directs his next to Vanyel. _:I didn’t choose this spot just because I like to have you pinned against walls. Duck!:_

“Everybody down!” Vanyel screams, over the clamor of the battle, and he hears Augry and Jessa relay the command just before the catapult boulders littering their side of the battlefield are flung into the air and shattered, raining shrapnel into the heart of the Karsite formation. Enormous chunks of the mountain follow, each of them exploding as Tylendel Fetches them forward and blasts them with his Mage-Gift.

“I take it we’ve got company!” Augry shouts across, bent low over his Companion’s neck. Vanyel stretches a shield sideways to cover him and the few others crouched nearby, waiting out the hailstorm.

 _:Think that’s got his attention?:_ Tylendel asks. Vanyel straightens and blasts at the mage’s shield with a fireball in the space Tylendel gives him for it, dropping again to shout back to Augry.

“Send everyone in, go hard, but be ready to pull back as soon as you see demons! We need everyone clear before I can get a shield up!”

“Are we likely to see demons?” Augry shouts back, and Vanyel feels Tylendel’s mental chuckle roll all the way down his spine.

 _:Time for fireworks,:_ he thinks to Yfandes. _:Let’s make ourselves a target.:_

She leaps forward into a gallop, her mane and tail streaming out behind her, and Vanyel lights up the sky, throwing fireballs and levinbolts ahead of them. He hears a growing roar behind him, and then a chorus of screams drowned out by the rush of water as Tylendel breaks the dam high up in the mountain and brings what sounds like half the river crashing down onto the Karsites’ flank.

He worries briefly that one or both of them won’t have any reserves left when they need them, but there’s a node nearby that neither of them have even begun to tap. The blood mage has to be soaking up power like a sponge from all the death around him, and Vanyel couldn’t say whose power source will dry up first, but they’re hoping to have one more surprise on their side.

And there it is. The twisting, scorching, blackened sense of a gash tearing open, creating a portal for something terrible to climb out of its pit. Vanyel calls lightning into his hands and holds it, crackling and sparking, the glow illuminating Yfandes and turning the two of them into a beacon of white flame.

 _Come on, over here_ , Vanyel thinks urgently. _Keep your eyes on me_.

He’s got to put up enough of a fight to keep the demon’s attention on him, without actually incapacitating it so severely that the Karsite mage can finish it off when he turns it back. If he can turn it back. The creature slithering out of the portal is massive, spilling tentacles that burn away everything they touch like acid and leave streaks of white powder in their wake.

Yfandes starts backing, slowly, and Vanyel gives himself three more heartbeats for the thing to heave itself fully into their world before he sets the lightning loose on it. The Valdemarans are in full retreat, and it looks like chaos, soldiers fleeing the battle and streaming back toward the cliff while the archers cover their backs from what little remains of their reserve line. Vanyel can imagine the Karsite mage gloating, certain of their destruction, and hopes that will give them more time for everyone to fall back; that the mage will watch and wait for the creature he summoned to sweep across them, not expecting another attack.

 _:_ Ashke, _:_ he thinks, one last fleeting mental touch like a parting kiss, and feels it echoed back along their bond.

Vanyel centers, reaches for the node, and sets his mind to turning back a demon.

It’s awful. It feels like a scourge flaying open his soul, like the worst parts of himself crawling out of the darkness to drown him in violence and hatred; like a yawning void opening beneath him and sucking him into black despair. He holds against it, his will against the mage’s, against the demon’s, wrestling for control. He can feel the demon sliding around his mind, looking for an opening to possess him, to turn his own intent against him.

Yfandes flares white and brilliant, driving off the darkness, and Tylendel winds around him, feeding him strength and faith, anchoring him. The demon falters, and for the first time, Vanyel can sense the mage behind it, and the coil of magic around the demon made of blood and pain and death that binds them together.

 _Got you_ , he thinks, and _twists_ , snapping the connection and shattering the control spell binding the demon.

He slams up every shield he has in the next moment, desperately hoping it will be enough, and that the demon will turn its attention from him to easier prey. It hangs there for a moment, tentacles writhing as though tasting the air, and then it rolls back toward the Karsite army, and the shocked mage.

The Karsites attempt to flee, but Tylendel has shields set against the demon behind them, and the only way out is the river. They pour into it, the water still rushing wildly from the flash-flood Tylendel had called out of the mountain, and are swept back to the south, toward Karse.

A lot of them don’t make it that far. Vanyel feels sick as the demon feeds, a chorus of screams filling the air with every roiling lash, but he can’t help them, and part of him doesn’t even want to. It’s a part he doesn’t like very much, but the Karsites are willing to summon these creatures in order to wipe out Vanyel’s people, and in a very dark corner of his mind, something whispers that it feels like justice.

 _:Van,:_ Tylendel sends, his thoughts distracted and strained. _:We need to keep that portal open.:_

It’s pulsing, growing unstable as the mage’s attention is now diverted entirely to fighting for his life against the demon, and Tylendel doesn’t have the skill to wrest away control of it. Vanyel grasps after the loose tendrils of magic as they fray and unravel, weaving them together again as tightly as he can.

He’s running low on energy with everything he’s put into the shields, but on the heels of that thought, there’s a new line flowing into him, Tylendel pulling from the same node Vanyel had tapped and opening a stream directly between them.

 _Yfandes is right, we do this much too often_ , he thinks, but he’s not about to shut down that connection while he has a need for it. He gets the portal stabilized in time to witness the demon swallowing the mage whole, something he has no doubt will feature in his nightmares for months, and then Yfandes is shouting: _:Now, get it back in now!:_ and he inverts the portal into a sucking vortex, dragging the demon back to its own plane.

It doesn’t want to go. It’s still hungry, and there’s still food, and it claws at him, whips tentacles against his shield and batters mindless rage against his mind, but he doesn’t let it find purchase. He hauls it across the bloody, filthy battleground, inch by inch, until it finally begins to slide through.

It’s wrapped a dozen arms around the edges of the portal to hold against him, but that’s fine: Vanyel doesn’t need _all_ of it to cross over. Once nothing is left but clinging tentacles and ravening madness, he snaps the portal shut, and hears a furious scream as the tips of the last tentacles are sliced off and drop, writhing, to the ground.

The Karsites are in a rout. Vanyel’s last conscious thought is that he hopes Augry doesn’t need him for anything else, and then he slumps forward over Yfandes’ neck into darkness.

⛯

Vanyel wakes curled on his side under a blanket, with someone’s arm fitted snugly around his waist and the familiar throb of an overextension headache in his temples. If there were any doubt of who’s sharing the cot with him, the immediate sense of safety banishes it.

A light mental touch tells him that Tylendel is asleep, though not deeply; at the brush against his shields, Tylendel’s mind curls around him like the tendril of a vine. Vanyel slips free and seeks out Yfandes next; she’s nearly as close, and more alert.

 _:Where…?:_ he asks, still foggy from sleep.

 _:Back in Valdemar. Herald Augry moved the camp and is handling reassignments. You haven’t been out that long,:_ she says, in response to the next question he hasn’t even fully formed. _:It’s evening and everyone has settled in, you could sleep more if you wanted to. Gala and I are just outside.:_

Implicit in that is the understanding that no one will be disturbing him without going through two Companions to do it. She must have carried him back across the border; he might have done something unforgivable if anyone had tried to drag him off her before he was fully conscious.

 _:’Lendel got you settled in the tent,:_ Yfandes answers, still listening in on his thoughts. _:You’re less likely to blast anyone by accident when he’s there.:_

Vanyel shares a dubious thought with her at that. His threat-reactions are wildly out of balance, and a perceived danger to her or Tylendel is far more likely to set him off than simply being startled.

She chuckles. _:You didn’t twitch when the Healer had a look at you.:_ More reassuring than her words is the overtone he senses; that she’d never let him harm an innocent, any more than she’d let harm come to him.

Tylendel shifts, his nose burrowing into the back of Vanyel’s neck, and Yfandes sends another wordless pulse of assurance as she fades from his mind. Vanyel takes a deep breath, testing how much the rest of him aches, and Tylendel’s arm tightens around him in response, automatically trying to pull him closer. Something twinges in his back, and Vanyel’s elbow jerks back in surprise, catching Tylendel’s side.

“Ow,” Tylendel mumbles, muffled by Vanyel’s hair. That brings another set of memories surging to the front of Vanyel’s mind, and he twists in Tylendel’s embrace, propping himself on his elbow and ignoring Tylendel’s incoherent protest. He pushes Tylendel flat onto his back and pulls his arms above his head, wrestling the loose shirt he’s wearing up over Tylendel’s chest until it catches under his armpits.

“You know,” Tylendel muses, yawning, “anyone seeing us right now would think they’ve walked in on something much more interesting.”

Vanyel stares down at the thin linen bandage wrapped around Tylendel’s torso, the silver-pink line of a scar bisecting his chest, and the mass of dark bruises he can see spreading in every direction beneath the cloth. He makes an anguished noise in the back of his throat, which Tylendel moves immediately to soothe, his hands settling over Vanyel’s shoulders.

“What _happened?_ ” Vanyel demands, horrified.

Tylendel sighs and strokes his arms, slow and calming. “I had a disagreement with that first demon at the fort over whether my rib cage belonged inside my chest or out of it. There were a few cracks, but they’re healing.”

“And then you rode full-tilt across half the length of the border,” Vanyel reminds him.

“Healer Tamrin’s already had a look. I think we’re getting on well; the first thing she said to me was, ‘you must be the leech.’” Tylendel tugs gently, urging Vanyel back down to the cot. “I heard it did a number on you, as well. I’m sorry for that. I never want to hurt you, and I couldn’t ask. If you…”

There are complicated layers to the question Tylendel won’t ask, but Vanyel can guess most of them. If he needs space; if he’s not ready to forgive; if he wants to set boundaries.

“Don’t even think it. If you _hadn’t_ taken anything from me, I wouldn’t have forgiven you. I knew what was happening.” Vanyel catches one of Tylendel’s hands and places it over his heart. “How long do you think I’d last without you?”

He knows the answer to that, down to the moment. If Tylendel had died, Vanyel would have pushed on, fought the mage, stopped the army—and brought them down with a Final Strike. He would have lived as long as he’d needed to, and then he’d have followed Tylendel.

Tylendel is quiet, no doubt thinking the same thing. Vanyel folds back down next to him, fitting himself carefully against Tylendel’s side, under his arm. He needs a number of things right now—water, a chamber pot, a bath, broth to ease the cramp in his stomach—but he needs Tylendel more, and he knows without asking that the feeling is mutual.

“I was going to remind you which of us just turned back a demon and passed out on top of his Companion, but I don’t think I’m ready to joke about that just yet.” Tylendel’s voice is a soft murmur, followed by a quiet sigh. “I’m telling Randi we’re not getting out of bed for a month.”

Vanyel snorts, and he can feel the slight tremble of Tylendel’s silent laughter beneath his cheek. “I’m only half-kidding. A week, at least. You can’t say they don’t owe it to us.” Tylendel’s fingers trace over Vanyel’s elbow. He sounds slightly more himself when he continues, “Have I told you Gala’s plan?”

Vanyel lifts his chin to look at Tylendel, who’s half-smiling back down at him. His hair is cropped shorter than when Vanyel last saw him, curling around his ears. “She says if they get any more reckless with us, she’s taking matters into her own hands, and we’ll see if they send a pregnant Companion onto the front lines.” He cracks a faint smile, and Vanyel finds himself smiling helplessly back, disbelieving.

“She wouldn’t.”

“She would.” Tylendel’s hand cups his elbow, his thumb stroking the soft crease. “She means it, too, about doing it for us. As much as Gala worries about me and Yfandes frets over you...Gala knows I’d be lost without you. We found each other for a reason.”

Vanyel kisses him, finding it impossible to do anything else, and feels another soft, shuddering exhale as Tylendel’s lips part. He tries to keep it light, but there’s a desperate edge to the contact that bleeds from both of them, relief that they’re somehow still alive and together.

Tylendel’s breath catches in pain, and Vanyel eases back, licking his lips and collecting his scattered thoughts. “They’ll have to put you on leave for a while,” he notes, his hand skating over Tylendel’s bruised and cracked ribs. “What did the Healer say?”

“Not to move, and that she thought putting us together would help.” Tylendel’s mouth quirks up, and Vanyel has to bite the inside of his lip to keep from kissing him again. “Apparently we’re interesting enough for a Collegium paper, if we’d keep out of harm’s way for long enough.”

Vanyel hums, and turns his head enough to press a light kiss to one of the bruises high up on Tylendel’s chest. Then there’s another, and another after that, and before he’s entirely aware of what he’s doing, he’s drifted halfway down Tylendel’s torso, still bared where Vanyel has tangled up his shirt.

Tylendel’s breath catches, and this time it’s something entirely different from pain. “Van,” he groans, fingers threading through Vanyel’s hair. “I am _absolutely_ not allowed to do this.”

“What, are you doing something?” Vanyel asks, continuing his leisurely path across Tylendel’s stomach. The muscles against his lips jump when Tylendel laughs, half-breathless.

“Gala says if you break me, you’re answering to her for it.” A breath, and then, still laughing, “And she’s not above bringing someone in to cool us off a little.”

That does give Vanyel pause, hovering just over Tylendel’s navel. He hadn’t planned to take this any further, but then he hadn’t been planning at all, really. “I wouldn’t let us get caught.”

Tylendel’s laugh bubbles out of him, no longer silent and breathless. “Are you joking? These are all our people now, we’re not at a border fort. They know or they don’t care. Even so, no one is coming anywhere near this tent.”

Vanyel frowns and extends his Empathy a little, over the camp—and wishes at once that he hadn’t, snapping his shield back into place. He feels Yfandes’ confusion, but he can’t bring himself to answer her. He’s frozen in place with Tylendel’s hands still in his hair, although they’ve turned careful now, sensing something is wrong.

There’s a light touch against his shields, Tylendel asking to share his thoughts, and Vanyel lets him in even before he’s thought it through. Tylendel submerges into his mind like he’s sinking into a bath, following the tangled jumble of Vanyel’s fears and discomfort.

“Oh. Are we going to talk about this now?” Tylendel doesn’t seem surprised in the least, and he doesn’t push, asking aloud rather than mind-to-mind. When Vanyel shakes his head slightly, Tylendel cards a hand through his hair, brushing it back behind his ear. “Are you sure? You’ve been working awfully hard to not-think about this for a while now.”

He doesn’t know what to say, is the problem; he hasn’t sorted it out himself, and he’s not nearly ready to face all of it right now. Tylendel hums thoughtfully, rubbing Vanyel’s temples where he’d all but forgotten about his headache.

“Van,” Tylendel says hesitantly. “Would you mind if I talked to Yfandes for a bit?”

That brings him up short, although it probably shouldn’t. Companions don’t usually speak with any Herald besides their own, but due to the disastrous situation after Vanyel’s Gifts became active with Tylendel still halfway into madness, they’d broken that taboo early on. They still don’t do it often—Vanyel can count the number of times he’s spoken with Gala since that first awful year on one hand, and nearly always in an emergency. Sometimes they catch echoes of each other, like Tylendel and Yfandes had during the battle earlier—

He really can’t think about the battle.

 _:I think we should,:_ Yfandes answers in his head. _:You haven’t been able to put this into words, and it’s been eating at you.:_

He nods, and Tylendel slides an arm around his shoulders again when Vanyel rolls back onto his side.

What he’d Felt outside the tent - what Tylendel had already known about, the reason no one will disturb them - is a combination of awe and fear spread all through the camp, and centered on him. They’d known what he was capable of, in theory, but it’s another thing to see it, and what they’d seen…

He flinches back from that thought. He’d meant to ask Yfandes for the names of the dead, everyone he hadn’t managed to save. It’s not resentment that he’s sensed, though—it’s a mix of hero worship and terror that he’s felt before, more and more frequently in the past year.

“Van,” Tylendel murmurs after a while, “can you open up a little?”

He hadn’t meant to shield Tylendel out completely, but he realizes he’s blocked Yfandes as well, shutting out everything that isn’t his own thoughts. Tylendel doesn’t brush against his mind this time, waiting for Vanyel to make the decision to let him back in.

Vanyel is a stronger projective empath, but Tylendel has always been better at receptive empathy, which has led to endless variations on the same joke when they’re in the mood to tease about it. Vanyel only has to crack his shields open a fraction for Tylendel to sense what he’s feeling, and as soon as he does, Tylendel’s shoulders ease.

“Can I tell you what I think, and you can tell me if I’m wrong?” When Vanyel nods, Tylendel continues, “You’re making the best of a bad situation, fighting this war, and the more your reputation gets ahead of you, the more people see you as a hero, or a symbol; more than human. And at the same time, everything you’re doing out here makes you feel less human. When it comes down to it, there’s no one reminding you that you’re still a person, not better or worse than anyone else. Am I close?”

Vanyel squeezes his eyes closed, and feels sixteen again when he says, “I never asked for this kind of power.”

Tylendel’s presence curls around his mind the way it had when he’d been waking earlier, warm and gentle. “I know. It’s not as if you can do anything else with it either, right now. Love, to be honest, I don’t know how anyone gets through a war like this without questioning whether they’re still human. You’re just getting it from all sides, and that’s not helping.” There’s a pause, and then Tylendel says wryly, “You did just send a demon back through a portal to another plane. Give them a day or two to get over it.”

“You brought down half the mountain,” Vanyel reminds him, sharper than he should because it hurts, to be set apart like this. Not just apart from the soldiers, or the Heralds, or even the other Herald-Mages; he’s being set apart from Tylendel, and does that mean there’s no one left that he can be close to, because of everything he’s done?

“Whatever you’re thinking right now, stop it, I can feel you pulling away. It’s different for me. Everyone knows just how badly I screwed things up, and that’s going to follow me forever. No matter what I do, I can’t be anything other than fallible, because I nearly lost everything, you and Gala and the Heralds, and nothing will change that. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel like a monster sometimes. Who just had to talk me off this ledge a few weeks ago, hmm?”

Vanyel rubs a hand over his eyes and pretends he isn’t hiding for another few heartbeats. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” he says finally, which is the part he’s been not-thinking about the hardest. He’s not even sure whether it’s true, because if anyone else asked, he’d say he would carry on for as long as he had to, without question. Maybe he’s just starting to wonder how long he _should_.

“We’re going on leave,” Tylendel says, with finality. “You said yourself, they can’t keep me on border duty right now, not until I heal, and I’m prepared to throw a _fit_ if they don’t bring you back with me. Yfandes and Gala will back us—no, listen, love.” He cuts off Vanyel’s half-formed protest with his fingertips over Vanyel’s lips. “You’re going to say there’s a war on, we have a duty, and I get it. I wouldn’t have stayed away from you for more than a year if I didn’t. But that mage is dead, we’ve just scattered a good part of the Karsite army, and more importantly, you need the rest. We both do.”

Yfandes is listening in at the back of his mind; when Tylendel pauses, she fills in the silence. _:I think you should take some time. At least a few weeks. I’m worried about you.:_

He looks up at Tylendel, who must see the answer in his eyes, because he grins. “Want to hear my plan? It’s even worse than Gala’s.”

“We’re not getting you pregnant,” Vanyel says flatly, without even a hint of teasing, and is rewarded with the sound of Tylendel’s laugh.

“Even worse. I mean, realistically, we’re in for another course of trauma counseling once they finally pull us off border duty for a full season…” Tylendel grins when Vanyel makes a face. “But in the short term - hear me out - we go and visit your parents.”

“ _What?_ ” Vanyel pulls himself halfway upright, staring at Tylendel in horror. “That’s your idea of _resting?_ ”

“You won’t get a break at Haven; they’ll try to drop students on you and half the council business on me. But more than that—who else will make you feel human again more than your family? And I’m not letting you face them alone, which means we go together.”

Vanyel makes a strangled noise. “’Lendel, you’ve _heard_ about my parents.”

“And I’m very much looking forward to meeting them. All right, I’m really not,” Tylendel admits, still grinning. “But I think they’d be good for you. And if I’m wrong, we both travel light—we can be packed and on our way to a quiet waystation in less than a candlemark, before they’ve realized we’re gone.”

“We could skip my family and just start at the waystation,” Vanyel counters, although he’s already lost and he knows it.

“Trust me?” Tylendel’s fingers tangle with his, and Vanyel’s throat goes dry.

“I do.”

Tylendel kisses his fingertips and smiles at him. “And come back down here? I can’t kiss you from here, and sitting up feels like stabbing myself in the chest.”

Vanyel smoothes Tylendel’s shirt back down before he does, trading soft, easy kisses with Tylendel for a few heartbeats until he settles against Tylendel’s side, with an arm laid very carefully over his stomach and Vanyel’s head pillowed on his shoulder.

“My parents,” Vanyel says after a moment, half in disbelief and half in despair. “This might be your worst idea yet.”

Tylendel laughs softly. “I don’t know. I did just trap you between a cliff and the Karsite army to face a demon while I Fetched myself a week’s ride east.”

“We’re talking about that later,” Vanyel warns, because he hasn’t forgotten, and even if he can convince Tylendel to _never do that again_ he’ll still have nightmares. Then, more quietly, he says, “I didn’t know everything love meant until I met you.”

Tylendel kisses his hair. “ _Ashke_ ,” he murmurs, “you’ve always been the best idea I’ve ever had.”

⛯

**Epilogue**

Vanyel lets the last chord of the ballad hang in the air for a breath before he touches the strings to silence it. Their rooms at Haven are bright, airy—and best of all, nearly all bare wood, so the acoustics are superb. They’d briefly considered tapestries or a rug to keep the rooms warmer in winter, but had decided they could keep each other warm enough instead.

There’s a wordless ripple of appreciation from his audience as Vanyel stands up to rack his lute. Tylendel is propped up on the couch with a writing desk over his legs, his quill scrawling out another signature. He’s still healing, and has fixed on correspondence as something that will keep his mind and hands busy for the afternoon.

“I’m out of practice,” Vanyel sighs, coming over to join Tylendel by the window. He settles on the floor, leaning back against the couch.

“I can’t imagine why,” Tylendel drawls, and reaches out for him without looking up from his letters. “Hand.”

Vanyel lets him have it, and soon Tylendel is massaging the knots out of his muscles with strong, calloused fingers. It’s the right idea; Vanyel hasn’t played for this long in a while, and left alone he can already tell that his hand would start to cramp.

“Are you writing correspondence for both of us?” Vanyel asks curiously, taking in the stacks of parchment. One of them - Tylendel’s, he presumes - is ready to be taken by a page, folded and sealed with wax. The other is a pile of finished letters, waiting for him to read through them and approve before they’re sent off.

“I have time, and I wanted you to keep playing. I’ve missed your music.” Tylendel’s thumb digs into his palm, and Vanyel makes a noise that’s half-pain and half-blissful relief. “It’s better if I answer them, anyway; you’re more likely to feel obligated to say yes to half of these invitations, and you’ll only be miserable if you do.”

Since Tylendel can sort out Vanyel’s friends from distant social acquaintances as well as Vanyel can, he isn’t inclined to object. Tylendel’s right; he _would_ feel like he ought to make more appearances at dinner parties and meetings, and as tired as he is, he’d regret it before the end of the first night.

“Anything interesting?” Vanyel asks, tipping his head back against Tylendel’s leg. It would be nice to see Breda, he thinks, and Jaysen. They’ve already had one dinner with Savil, and an unofficial audience with Randi and Shavri.

“One,” Tylendel answers, sliding it out of the stack one-handed. He clears his throat, and Vanyel’s stomach lurches in premonition even before he begins reading: _“To Lord Withen Ashkevron of Forst Reach from Herald-Mage Tylendel Frelennye…”_

Vanyel groans and twists sideways, curling up to drop his face into Tylendel’s lap. Tylendel shifts his arm so he can continue to work the knots from Vanyel’s fingers, unperturbed.

_“Our sincere thanks for your invitation to visit. You may know from reports of the war with Karse that this year has been a trying one, and it will be a great relief to spend some time with family under a friendly roof.”_

Vanyel’s garbled moan is muffled against Tylendel’s thigh. Tylendel lets go of his hand and starts petting Vanyel’s hair, raising his voice slightly to carry over the noise.

_“We look forward to celebrating the harvest festival with you, and to meeting the newest members of the Ashkevron family, for which we offer congratulations.”_

It’s not that Vanyel forgets, exactly, that Tylendel was also a noble before he was Chosen—it’s just that Tylendel had left that part of his life behind before they’d ever met. It’s only rarely, in moments like this one, that Vanyel is reminded he can play this game as well as any Lord Holder when he puts his mind to it.

Tylendel goes on to address several political situations inside Valdemar that Vanyel’s father must have asked about, offers opinions from his limited experience with livestock management which have to relate to the latest disagreement between Vanyel’s father and his brother Mekeal, and expresses his thanks once again for what Vanyel knows is more of a summons home than a true invitation.

_”On a personal note, having lost my own parents when I was young, I cannot express what it means to me to be welcomed into your home. I sincerely look forward to our meeting and a relaxing stay in Forst Reach. By my hand and seal, Tylendel Frelennye.”_

There’s a pause. Vanyel turns his head enough to look doubtfully up at Tylendel out of one eye. Tylendel looks back down at him, warm and amused, and waits for the verdict.

“That was very diplomatic of you,” Vanyel says finally.

“Envoy training,” Tylendel reminds him. “I’m not giving him any graceful way to uninvite me. We’ll have to leave a few days after this is sent, before he has a chance to reply.”

“He didn’t invite you in the first place,” Vanyel points out, eyebrows raised. His parents have, on the whole, done an impressive job of pretending Tylendel doesn’t exist, unless they’re forced to acknowledge in passing some note about Vanyel’s ‘friend’. His father in particular has all but forbidden Vanyel to ever bring Tylendel home with him, which until now has left them at something of an impasse.

“Didn’t he?” Tylendel feigns surprise. “He must not have realized I’d be the one answering his letter.”

Vanyel laughs helplessly, burying his face against Tylendel’s stomach. “They’re going to put you in a guest room halfway across the holding.”

“They can try.” Tylendel’s tone makes it clear he has no intention of staying there if they do. His fingers are gentle when they stroke Vanyel’s hair back behind his ear. “Have you forgiven me yet?”

“Ask me again after we get through this.” He looks up again, taking in the soft look in Tylendel’s brown eyes and the quirk of his mouth, and the way one dark-gold curl has sprung loose to fall against his eyebrow. He sighs. “My mother is going to eat you alive.”

“We’ve faced worse.” Tylendel brings Vanyel’s hand to his lips and kisses his fingers. “Dinner with Jaysen and Savil tonight?”

“I love you.” He doesn’t necessarily mean to say it in answer, but he also can’t imagine not saying it. It fills him up until there’s no room for anything else.

Tylendel folds Vanyel’s hand between his and smiles down at him. “Try to remember that when you introduce me to your parents.”

Vanyel’s groan is drowned out this time by Tylendel’s laughter.


End file.
